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DOROTHY DELAFIELD 




MARY HARRIOTT NORRIS. 




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NEW YORK: 

PHILLIPS & HUNT. 
CINCINNATI: 

CRANSTON & STOWE. 
1886. 



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Copyright, 1886, by 
PHILLIPS & HUNT, 
New York. 





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TO 

MV BELOVED MOTHER, 

WHOSE BEAUTIFUL MIND AND LOVING HEART HAVE BEEN THE INSPIRATION 
OF MY LIFE, THIS BOOK IS REVERENTLY 


Inscribed 








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PREFACE. 


W HILE sitting in the Roman Forum, one October 
morning, trying to gain a lasting impression of 
its architectural fragments, my thoughts reverted to 
Dorothy Delafield^ still in need of an introduction to 
the reader. 

I had stood on the Julian Rostra, endeavoring to peo- 
ple the dilapidated market-place with the ambitious life 
and movement of imperial Rome. But imagination 
was powerless in the material presence of a past, that 
mutely, but emphatically, reiterated the brokenness and 
finiteness of a dominion so proud that it even apotheo- 
sized its heroes. Turn which way my eyes would, frag- 
ments only remained, each epitomizing the utter inability 
of a nation that had conquered the world to achieve a 
dramatic unity in its history. 

In writing Dorothy Dela fields I realized that it 
would be both foolish and untrue to present even a 
single life as embodying a dramatic harmony of endow- 
ment, environment, and achievement. 

Every individual life, as well as every national life, 
includes a series of recessions and advances ; in a few 
there is a seeming culmination with which, however, the 
conclusion is oftener inconsistent than consistent. Doro- 
thy Delafield^ therefore, presents fragments from several 
lives, romantic or realistic, according to the reader’s 
point of view. 

The heroine is an American girl, with an essentially 
American experience. As a very young girl, she sup- 
poses herself to be acting from her deepest intellectual 
convictions. As a young woman, she perceives that her 
supposed intellectual convictions are theories, and as 
much theories of others as her own. She is purposely 
left where every woman of the nineteenth century will 


6 


Preface. 


have to be left, until that century or some other gives 
the final answer to questions which Dorothy practically 
and immediately tried to answer, and questions most 
likely to attract and stimulate girls with a high and rare 
spiritual endowment. 

The author knows, no more than the reader, whether 
Dorothy Delafield was like a wandering star seeking in- 
stinctively to regain a lost and harmonious orbit, or 
whether she, in common with many another of those 
finer womanly organizations, the direct product of 
American life and teaching, will, in the generations to 
come, be considered as comets shining for a little time 
with meteoric brilliancy. 

Whatever may be the issue of this period of womanly 
endeavor, whether it shall be proven, on the whole, an 
advancement or a recession, the verdict of the future 
must be that the quickening of the intellectual and 
spiritual aspiration of American women of the nineteenth 
century testify as signally to national progress and pros- 
perity as the spotless purity and commanding influence 
of the vestal virgins illustrated the glory of imperial Rome. 

Ellice is intended to express the opposite of Dorothy, 
and, like Dorothy, after garnering a few personal experi- 
ences, to formulate new theories and principles of action. 

Incidentally the story depicts the life of an American 
village in the East, and the evils resulting from a 
monopoly. 

The author presents Dorothy Delafield to the reader, 
hoping that earnest girls and Christian mothers will 
love her, and that any woman who has acted courage- 
ously, according to her convictions, will gain fresh in- 
spiration, since Dorothy, although treading a thorny 
path, plucked many a rose from the way-side. 

Mary Harriott Norris. 


Rome, Italy, October^ i886. 


DOROTHY DELAFIELD. 


PART FIRST. 


I. 

I T was June of the year i860. The chestnuts were 
covered with green satin leaves. The elms were 
waving their slender, drooping branches. The roses 
were in profuse bloom. There was a carnival of 
growth every-where. 

A mild but heavy perfume exhaled from grape 
blossoms in forests and gardens. Robins and cat- 
birds sang jubilates from morning till night. A 
broad, warm sunlight, with the calmness of the 
everlasting about it, rested on the landscape. While 
it was June every-where, it seemed to be June in 
particular in a little mountain village named Quincy. 

Genealogically Quincy was the child of Old 
Quincy. Both parent and child were mill-towns, 
the former dating back to Revolutionary times, 
and, like most remains of the War for Independ- 
ence, only a relic of its former self. The venerable 
iron-mills were in ruins. The few houses scattered 
through the valley of its site were not distinguish- 
able in appearance from other farm-houses. Decay 
brooded in a green mold on shingles and clap- 
boards, and the only sounds that disturbed the 


8 


Dorothy Delafield. 


slumbers of the dying town were the rattle of an 
occasional vehicle and the never-ceasing roar and 
gurgle of the Speedaway, a turbulent but shallow 
stream, flowing through both Old Quincy and 
Quincy. 

The Speedaway was a picturesque creek. Just 
above Quincy, which was two miles from Old 
Quincy, the creek deepened and broadened into a 
black, smoothly-flowing current, sweeping noise- 
lessly on, until it came to a rocky, narrow bed, 
whence it suddenly descended in a ragged water- 
fall to a level three hundred feet below. 

Every thing conspired to give an air of isolation 
and somber quietude to the locality of this beautiful 
fall. On one side was an overhanging, shelving 
ledge of metamorphic rock. Cedars and firs, cast- 
ing a deep shade, straggled out of the scant earth on 
its summit, and hung far over the water. On either 
side forest trees crowned ranges of abrupt hills. 

From the fall the water steeply descended over a 
bed filled with bowlders. A quarter of a mile below 
the fall the volume and impetus of the little river 
fed the life of a group of motley, desolate iron-mills, 
situated in the midst of a barren clearing. These 
mills consisted of a blast furnace, a score of puddling 
furnaces, a saw-mill, two nail-mills, and some vast, 
open-sided sheds for stowing nail-kegs and un- 
seasoned timber. 

The small and narrow valley in which the mills 
huddled together, a sorry, black mass, was shut in 
abruptly, and on all sides, by steep hills ; on the 
north, crowning a ridge of these hills, was Quincy. 

The streets of Quincy were lanes rather than 


Dorothy Delafield. 


9 


streets, and free from grass only in the very center. 
The village showed from time to time a rough at- 
tempt at sidewalks. Here and there was the sem- 
blance of a cobbled gutter, but, in general, in front 
of each house. Nature was left to have her way. 
Occasionally the winter’s accumulation of ashes was 
cast along the fence of a cottage to harden the side- 
walk, and for days the high spring winds would 
sport with this light toy, to the annoyance of every 
passer-by. 

On every side stretched acres of woodland and 
cleared ground, invested with a mysterious dignity 
because of the title “ The Company’s Land.” Two 
or three miles from Quincy, in the rich valleys below 
the hills, were spacious gambrel-roofed homesteads 
— the wealth, the intelligence, the culture which 
the long possession of land gives. A dozen miles 
away a succession of thriving towns, having rail 
communication with New York, kept the provincial 
element in the background. But Quincy was 
delightfully, refreshingly provincial. 

The mills were managed by a corporation of 
“ bosses ” — limited. These bosses were social lead- 
ers. There were boss-puddlers, boss-nailers, boss- 
plumbers, boss-coopers, even boss-laborers — and 
other bosses innumerable. When the hour for the 
noon repast came, and the “ on ” and “ off” men 
slowly toiled down and up the hills, it was a ques- 
tion among new residents who was a boss and who 
was not. No refinement of feature, no look of 
higher intelligence, no great difference of garb 
distinguished the bosses. A Quincyite sometimes 
said, with quiet humor. 


10 Dorothy Delafield. 

• 

“ About every third man in Quincy is a boss.” 

There was a system of nepotism in Quincy, and 
it is doubtless from this town that presidents and 
others learned the benefits of a plan which provided 
for all needy relatives. At all events, the agents, 
who from time to time ruled over the mills, spread 
their branches like green bay-trees. 

Although the town boasted but two thousand five 
hundred inhabitants, it had five churches. It was 
characteristic of Quincy that each of these churches 
crowned a hill. 

The Catholic church was the only one that had 
any architectural pretensions. It looked not unlike 
the grim, solid structures to be met with in Canada, 
and was duly set off with flying buttresses and a 
slender, open tower, in which swung a bell that vied 
with the mill-bell in the frequency of its calls. The 
priest’s house was opposite ; more modern, too, than 
the other houses of the place. The priest, more- 
over, had his own horses, while nearly all the other 
horses in Quincy were the Company’s horses. 

The Presbyterian church was a small pea-green 
structure, with a central tower containing a mellow, 
friendly bell. It had a great many brackets stuck 
under the eaves and about the porches, a town-clock 
that rarely went, and a membership impregnable in 
the estimation of the Quincyites, since it gathered 
into its fold not only all the bosses of the mills, but 
also, in an ex-officio way, the owners themselves, 
who were among “the elect ” in a neighboring city. 
Its respectability was still further enhanced by 
small marble tablets which appeared, at various 
intervals, transfixed to the wall, the quality of the 


Dorothy Delafield, i i 

marble in each tablet being voted upon in deacons’ 
meeting, so as to accurately grade the rank of him 
whom it muteTy memorialized. 

The Dutch Reformed was a traveled church, for 
it had been moved bodily from Pine Grove. It was 
a non-committal building, looking outwardly, with 
its gable end toward the street, very much like a 
house of larger dimensions than most Quincy 
abodes. It had long green blinds to its long win- 
dows; long green Venetian shades on the interior ; 
wide panels, in lavender and gray, on the side w’alls, 
and a circular sort of paneled arrangement behind 
the pulpit, intended to simulate an apse, or, at 
least, to give an effect of perspective, but serving 
only to make the minister appear extremely bilious. 

The Episcopal church was a brown, wren-like 
little building, with small stained-glass windows. 
The hill on which it had built its nest was modestly 
inclosed with arbor vitcB and decorously planted 
with evergreens. It was a sweet, consecrated-look- 
ing little place, objectionable to most Quincyites 
because many of its members had ‘‘ found religion ” 
in other churches, and because it was “ awful on- 
sociable in union meetin’s.’* 

The Methodist Episcopal church vied with the 
Catholic in the height of its hill, and was conspicuous 
for the primitive simplicity of its architecture. It 
was of huge proportions ; its corners mathematically 
squared ; its walls high, white, and bare ; its two long 
lines of windows curtained with Venetian blinds ; its 
high pulpit reached by two steep flights of stairs ; 
the two broad aisles were covered with matting. A 
long, straight gallery faced the pulpit. There were 


Dorothy Delafield. 


I 2 

no cushions in the white wooden seats. The Method- 
ist Episcopal was the unfashionable church of Quincy. 
Its status can be appreciated when flie niece of an 
operative was forbidden to go to Methodist meet- 
ing, “ ’cause all the riff-raff of Quincy went there.” 

The “ Company,” whoever they were, did not 
live in Quincy. Hence, the Company's agent and 
his family were the center whence all social laws 
emanated. Their pew in the little pea-green church 
was a focus around which clustered the pews of the 
would-be genteel. All the subscriptions of the little 
village, all the Sunday-school concerts and straw- 
berry festivals, all the excursions were sanctified by 
Mr. Joshua Maxim’s name. When Mrs. Joshua 
Maxim wore the same bonnet two seasons the mil- 
linery business flagged. When Miss Frances Maxim 
left the public school the principal was reprimanded 
in trustees’ meeting. When Mr. Walter Maxim 
first wore a silver watch, the sons of all the boss- 
puddlers were forthwith supplied with this indispen- 
sable article of use and ornament. 

The institution of importance next to the churches 
was the public school. Built at a time when cupo- 
las were the latest architectural novelty, the cupola 
was erected first in the plans, and the school build- 
ings around it. A huge bell was suspended from 
the cupola ; a huge globe stood on a corner of the 
principal’s platform. There were long stretches of 
blackboard ; there were dreary stairs and halls, 
which, at the opening and closing of school, were 
packed with a mass of young life that too often 
found the school pleasanter than home. There was 
a “green” around this school house covered with a 


Dorothy Delafield. 


13 


growth of fine old chestnut-trees. This green was 
the spot where Quincy’s Witenagemote assembled, 
not as a body of wise men to make laws and enact * 
punishments, but as freemen, filled with patriotism, 
on election-day and the Fourth of July. The leaves 
of the old trees had rustled with the volume of sound 
sent up from the throats of a hundred lusty school- 
boys ; their shadows had witnessed the games and 
rivalries of girls long since grown into middle-aged 
women. Festivals and picnics had desolated patches 
of greensward that had seemed to lovingly maintain 
a thrifty existence beneath the feet of children. This 
old green, in short, must recall to many an urchin, 
now a man who treads its cheerful slope, thoughts 
embodied in that fine old elegy which sings the 
possibilities of the great company of the unknown. 

After the families of Mr. Joshua Maxim, the 
ministers, the doctors, and the bosses, the person 
next in importance in Quincy was the dress-maker. 

It was before the days of Demorest and La Revue 
des deux Mondes that Miss Dainty, with the air of a 
dictator, went from house to house. She carried 
her patterns in her head, and deftly cutting them 
out of newspaper, if her customer were much above 
or below her ordinary measurement, pinned them, 
with a thoughtful eye, upon the person to be fitted, 
and succeeded in dimly outlining the form, which 
was all that was then required of her art. Miss 
Dainty could make dresses and coats and cloaks. 
She could do any thing, to the entire satisfaction of 
the Quincyites, that demanded scissors and needles 
as instruments. Best of all, she always brought the 
latest village gossip. 


14 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Next to Miss Dainty, the dress-maker, was Job, the 
stage-driver. That Quincy stage ! a dear old Fal- 
staffian stage, with merry bulging sides ; with a cen- 
ter of gravity which was always rocking in a delight- 
fully uncertain manner; with wide leather-cushioned 
seats vis-d-vis within ; with a high seat without, on 
which Job sat enthroned, and a rack behind, on 
which trunks were strapped. That stage had run 
for twenty years between Quincy and Denham, eight 
miles distant. Every evening it dashed over and 
down the Quincy hills with a swoop of Job’s whip 
right and left and a gay rattling of leathern straps 
about the horses and vehicle which excited the 
small boys to such an extent that when Job drew up 
at the post-office, with a loud whoa, he and his out- 
runners were as terrible in their noise as an “army with 
banners.” “The stage is coming!” was the even- 
ing cry of many a boy and girl, for this mild excite- 
ment of watching who were within was the chief 
wire which connected Quincy with the outside world. 
It was the stage that brought visitors and strangers. 
It was the stage that brought newspapers and let- 
ters. Well might Job plume himself, until he verily 
thought, as did all his patrons, that the news he 
didn’t know “ warin’t wuth knowin’.” 

There were two doctors in Quincy at the time my 
story opens. They were both old. One was tall 
and gaunt, with an expression of mingled sternness 
and benevolence. His spectacles were tied by a 
shoe-string around the egg-shaped oval of his head, 
as they had a habit of slipping up and down. The 
other doctor was of medium height, with an arch to 
his prominent nose which defied all slips to the 


Dorothy Delafield. 15 

deep convexity of his glass orbs. The corners of 
his mouth turned up till they met the deep creases 
on either side of his nose. His broad, prominent 
teeth, slightly separated, emphasized all his smiles. 
He successfully initiated many a child into the mys- 
teries of breathing ; he heaved a gentle sigh of regret 
when he sometimes found that the lesson wearied 
them and they abruptly decided to leave the lesson 
forever unlearned. But births or deaths— living, 
with its agonies of bliss or despair, death, with its 
eternal secrets — were parts of the natural order of 
things. He hoped every thing would turn out all 
right, and if it did not, why ! up would go the cor- 
ners of the kindly, jovial mouth, the two plump 
hands would gently rub together— “ he could not 
help it ! ” But the doctor with the egg-shaped head, 
dear old Dr. Withers, there was not an ism about 
which he had not preplexed his reason or his con- 
science. His little old dingy house, red at one end, 
a dull, doubtful white on the remainder of its exte- 
rior, with a smell of drugs every-where, and an 
atmosphere of homelessness every-where, sheltered 
a noble old soul that racked his gaunt frame with 
queries and experiments, until he died inch by inch. 

Dr. Withers was a vegetarian. He was an abo- 
litionist. He was a prohibitionist. He was a free- 
thinker. It was wonderful that, with the clearly 
outlined dogmatic views of the Quincyites, Dr. 
Withers had any practice. But his undoubted skill, 
his big masculine tenderness, led his patients to 
compromise the matter with their consciences by 
offering special prayers for his salvation whenever 
he had performed special cures for their bodies. 


i6 


Dorothy Delafield. 


©HAPIPBI^ II. 


ISS DAINTY was wending her way to Mrs. 



Front’s, for she was to cut and fit and make 


a dress for Mary Ann Front. 

Mrs. Front was rubicund and fleshy. She was 
the wife of a boss-nailer. She had small, bright black 
eyes under a slightly retreating forehead. She had 
but two teeth between her eye-teeth, which gave her 
at times a canine expression. Her oily black hair 
was parted so that it made a figure like an open fan 
on the top of her head. Her neat calico dress was 
unrelieved by collar or cuffs, but was fastened at 
the throat by a large gold brooch, composed of twp 
hearts joined, and tranfixed by an arrow. The flesh 
of the fat forefinger of her left hand rolled slightly 
over a gold ring with a flat heart on its circlet. A 
plain gold ring lay imbedded in the flesh of her wed- 
ding finger. Mrs. Front’s husband’s name was 
Enoch. 

“ Now, Henoch, don’t forgit to bring in the water 
an’ the coal afore yeh go to the mill. I’ve got tuh 
sew all day with Miss Dainty. Be sure tuh send 
Tommy prompt at twelve fer yeh dinner, for I’ve 
got a ’earty one for yeh to-day.” 

Enoch picked up the water-bucket from a low 
shelf in the shining kitchen and filled it at the well, 
took two coal-scuttles and supplied them, and 
then, halting in the middle of the room, said. 


“His that all, Hem’ly?” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


17 


“ Yes, Henoch, that’s all. O, give me six shil- 
lin’s to pay Miss Dainty. I like to be punctial, I 
do. Pay has yeh git, that’s what we said when we 
started out, aint it, Henoch.” 

“ Heh?” said Mr. Front, who was deaf. 

“ Hi say pay as yeh go’s hour motto. I want 
six shillin’s for Miss Dainty.” 

Enoch, whose sentiment was ocular rather than 
lingual, looked kindly at his wife, and taking out a 
roll of money — for his month’s pay had been given 
to him the night before — gave Emily five dollars. 

“ Don’t waste it, Hem’ly. P’raps Miss Dainty 
might have to stay more’n one day, an’ if she do, 
why, don’t mind.” 

There was a rap on the front door. Mr. Prout 
picked up his hat and went out of the back door as 
Miss Dainty was admitted. 

“ Lemme take your hat. Miss Dainty. Nice 
fresh day, aint it ! ” 

“ Yes, but its warm. The season, though, has 
been backward, and it has to be warm.” 

“ That’s what Henoch says. He’s great on the 
weather, Henoch is. I was a tellin’ ’im last night 
that we would ’ave to pay for May. Dear me ! I’ve 
been so to home the last week, I don’t know noth- 
in’ but the weather. Heard any news. Miss 
Dainty? ” 

“ O — no ! ” said Miss Dainty, in a tone that filled 
Mrs. Front’s ears with expectant delight. “ O — no 
— nothing of any account. Have you thought how 
you wanted Mary Ann’s dress made ? ” 

“ I’ve sort a made up my mind to puff sleeves, ef 
you say so too. Mary Ann’s arms are long and 
2 


i8 


Dorothy Delafield. 


thin, but the fashion’s the fashi’n. I told ’er she 
could ’ave ’em ef Miss Dainty advised.” 

“ Well, yes ; I think puff sleeves would be nice, 
and low neck?” 

“ Well, not too low. Henoch ’as ’is notions on that 
’ead. When I was a girl, though, we never give 
sleeves an’ necks a thought. I suppose, though, we 
must pergress. S’pose we say a ’alf-way low neck 
— an’ made with a yoke. I always did like yokes 
for girls.” 

“ Fannie Maxim’s new one is made with a yoke — > 
so deep ; ” and Miss Dainty measured on her hand. 

“ Well, make Mary Ann’s jes’ like it. Mrs. Maxim 
generally knows what’s about right. Don’t you 
think we’d ought ter lengthen Mary Ann’s skirts ? 
She’s goin’ on fourteen.” 

Ye-es; I made Fannie Maxim’s to reach just to 
the top of her boots. I should think that’d be 
about right.” 

“Yes, I’d like that — an’ a little pleatin’ roun’ the 
bottom. They say pleatin’s cornin’ in.” 

“Yes, it is,” said Miss Dainty, emphatically. 
“ They are going to trim more than usual this 
year.” 

“ That makes it good for dress-makers, though. 
Miss Dainty. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody 
good.” 

“ Good or bad, I always have too much to do. 
It ’ll take me to the middle of August to get the 
sewing all done; and then first of September winter 
work will begin. There’s no rest for me ! ” 

Miss Dainty contracted her lips, and Mrs. Prout 
maintained a minute’s respectful silence. The lull 


Dorothy Delafield. 


19 

was filled with the sound of the goods as it was torn 
into breadths for Mary Ann’s skirt. 

At this juncture that maiden entered, the back 
door of the small house slamming behind her, the 
sitting-room door opening spasmodically under her 
grasp. 

“ Now, Mary Ann, don’t, don’t make sech a 
noise ! There’s enough for yeh to do to keep yeh 
still. Miss Dainty wants yeh to sew yeh skirt up.” 

“Yes, Mary Ann,” said Miss Dainty, severely, 
“ you’ll have to look out, or there’ll be the same 
talk about you there is about the Dutch Reformed 
minister’s daughter.” 

What now ? ” exclaimed Mrs. Prout, quite forget- 
ful of Mary Ann’s danger in her eagerness to hear 
the news of Dora Millun. 

“ That Dora Millun is a bold, forward girl. Josie 
Stillwell saw her climbing the trees in the parson- 
age yard, and told her she didn’t think it was 
proper for a minister’s daughter.” 

“ ‘Why isn’t it?’ says Dora Millun. 

“ ‘ Because,’ says Josie, ‘you’d ought to set other 
girls an example.’ 

“ ‘ Then I’ll set you an example, and show you 
how I can go up the cherry-tree,’ and with that 
down she jumped from the little mulberry and went 
up that cherry-tree like a cat.” 

“ Actually ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Prout. 

“Yes, she actually did. Josie says she never 
smiled a wink, but just reproved her like by turn- 
ing her back on her. And Dora sat up there eat- 
ing cherries like a robin, and telling Josie she didn’t 
know what she was missing.” 


20 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Mary Ann had taken her skirt breadths in hand, 
but had listened so intently that her needle lay list- 
lessly in her fingers. 

“ I don’t see why a girl can’t climb a tree,” said 
she at length. 

“ There, I told you what you was coming to,” 
said Miss Dainty. Then, with precision, “A girl’s a 
girl, and a boy’s a boy.” 

“ That’s so,” said Mrs. Prout. “ I don’t see who 
Mary Ann takes after ; she’s not like my family. 
She’s a Prout through and through.” 

“ Well, I don’t care,” replied the girl, resolutely. 
“ If Josie Stillwell does call Dora Millun a tomboy, 
Dorothy Delafield says she^s nice, and what Dorothy 
thinks I think.” 

“ Dorothy Delafield is a harmless, innocent girl, 
who can’t say her soul’s her own, an’ it’s a great 
pity if she gets thick with that Dora Millun. All 
Dorothy cares for is books and babies, but that’s a 
great deal better’n some girls,” said Mrs. Prout, 
looking at Mary Ann meaningly and reprovingly. 

“ Dorothy knows more'n you think she does, 
mother,” said Mary Ann. “ She says she’s going to 
be a poetess, and I guess she will.” 

“ She had better stop thinkin’ of poetry an’ mu- 
sickin’. What good’ll it do her? You see how nice 
you’ll make that skirt, an’ set Dorothy an example.” 

“ She don’t need an example ; she can sew ’nough 
sight better’n me now,” said Mary Ann, decidedly. 

Mrs. Prout winked at Miss Dainty, and said, sotto 
voce, but really for Mary Ann’s ear, 

“ Mary Ann’s faithful, she is ; she ’as ’er faults, 
but she’s faithful.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


21 


(SHAPIFBI^ III. 

A nd who is Dorothy Delafield ? You can see 
her now, if you will. Under the thick glossy 
foliage of an orchard closely set with apple trees, 
two girls are walking back and forth, their arms 
about each other, and talking earnestly. 

“ O, Felia, what shall I do? You are the only 
friend I ever had, and I shall never, never have 
another. Don’t go ! ” 

Dorothy paused under the low branches of one 
of the most umbrageous of the trees ; she held 
Felia off with both hands, and looked into her com- 
panion’s eyes with tearful anticipation of the com- 
ing separation. Dorothy had a tender, true, round 
face. Her gray eyes were set under brows strongly 
defined, but finely shaped. The sunlight, which 
fell glinting on her head, revealed a mellow, golden 
glory. All over her cheeks and chin and throat the 
color came and went. It was a pink, clean, honest 
face, pathetic in its honesty. You could see that 
Dorothy was one of those rare natures to whom dis- 
trust amounts to positive pain. The lines of her 
destiny were cross lines legible in her brow, broad, 
perceptive; in her finely curved cheeks and chin, 
which were ready to sober into tears or wreathe 
with smiles ; and in her mouth, of which the upper 
lip was curved like a bow ; the lower one met it 
compactly, but with rich fullness. When she 
laughed her mouth looked like a large, generous, 


22 


Dorothy Delafield. 


rustic mouth ; when she smiled its expression was 
one of mingled tenderness and sadness. When 
Dorothy was thinking or acting there was a subtle 
strengthening of her lips, together with a slight 
attenuation of all her features, an arch of her neck, 
a luminousness of the eye ; it was then, and then 
only, that she was commanding and very beautiful. 
Dorothy was a somewhat clearly defined instance 
of the laws of heredity. All the fire of her nature, 
which till now had manifested itself chiefly in a 
serene but never-ceasing activity, came to her from 
a long, unbroken line of Puritan and English ances- 
tors, correct, devout, and learned. Her rustic trust- 
fulness and transparency, as well as a latent sadness 
of expression, were the bequest of an Irish great- 
grandmother — peasant and beauty at once — loved 
for a time for her wild-rose beauty, then neglected 
and deserted. The sins of gay gentlemen husbands 
and fathers are verily visited upon the children of 
the third and fourth generation. 

The apple orchard adjoined Dorothy’s home, and 
thither, while she was gazing longingly at her friend, 
a little brother came to call her, for Dorothy was at 
once daughter and maid of all work in the home. 

“Yes, yes, Joe; run in, and I will come right 
away.” 

“Now, Felia”— as Joe’s little legs trotted back 
with the message — “ now, Felia, wont you write 
often? I will answer every letter right away, and 
one of these days you will come back from that 
great West to visit us. O, I do not believe you will 
ever come back.” 

“ Yes, I will, Dorothy. If they will not bring me. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


23 


when I am grown I will come myself just to see you.” 
And Felia threw her arms enthusiastically about 
her friend. ‘‘And now good-bye, dear, dear Dorothy. 
Do not forget to be at the window when the stage 
passes, and I will wave. I wish you could come 
and see me off.” 

“ I can’t,” and Dorothy shut her lips together 
firmly but sadly. “ I’m the dependence, and father 
must not wait for his breakfast. Good-bye, Felia.” 

Dorothy turned away without another word. She 
walked off under the apple-trees, her slender back 
straight as an arrow, the great tears dropping one 
by one down her cheeks. As she came to the stone 
wall which separated the orchard from the yard, she 
snatched up her apron, dashed the tears away, and 
when little Joe met her at the porch she smiled her 
gentle smile, and Joe never knew that Dorothy had 
a heart-ache. 

Dorothy stepped into the small kitchen quickly, 
for the hour for tea was near, and her mother was 
away from home. In that kitchen Dorothy had 
dreamed most of her day-dreams. Its slender, 
rough rafters had heard many a sigh which Dorothy 
would suddenly heave after thinking and thinking, 
until she almost forgot to breathe. Into that white 
deal table she had scrubbed the energy that she 
was longing to expend on her books, which, next to 
Joe and Elizabeth, the baby sister, were her dearest 
delight. Dorothy found her father at the sink. 

“ You are home early, are you not, papa?” 

“ Yes, Dorothy,” and Mr. Delafield held up to her 
view the fish he was cleaning. “ I thought you would 
like some for tea. Do you know what this is? ” 


24 


Dorothy Delafield. 


A cat-fish, to be sure. But what a wicked, 
horny little head ! Ugh ! I don’t believe I should eat 
a mouthful if I had to clean it.” 

Dorothy laughed and stooped to rake the fire, 
which, however, glowed brightly. The kettle was 
singing. It took but a few minutes to set the table 
for their simple meal, to wash Joe’s and Elizabeth’s 
faces, and tie on their bibs. 

Dorothy paused, then, for the first time since she 
had come in. She leaned on the pump-handle and 
watched the process of cleaning, and anon looked 
into her father’s face. 

It was pleasant to see the look of mutual love 
and confidence exchanged. Mr. Delafield did not 
speak for several minutes, then he said, 

‘‘ Dorothy, I have a secret.” 

“A good one, papa?” 

“ Yes ; ” and her father drew a long breath of sat- 
isfaction. 

Whom is the secret about, papa?” 

“All of us, daughter. Can you keep it?” 

“ O trust me for that, papa ; what is it ? ” 

“ I have had an offer of partnership in the Com- 
pany’s store, Dorothy.” 

“ Of partnership ! ” screamed Dorothy. “ Why, 
papa, you will be a rich man, wont you ? ” 

“ Not very ; ” and Mr. Delafield was amused and 
sad at once. “ It doesn’t amount to that, dear. It is 
just the difference between eight and eighteen hun- 
dred dollars a year for me, at first. But that means, 
Dorothy, a little house-maid for your mother, and 
books and study for you.” 

“ But, papa, you will be one of the Company, 


Dorothy Delafield. 


25 


wont you ? and they own acres and acres, and the 
mills and houses and horses — why ! they own 
every thing in Quincy.” 

“Yes; but they do not expect to give me land 
or houses or horses, dear. It is this : they will give 
me so much for all the goods I sell, so many cents 
on every dollar, and it will amount to about eight- 
een hundred dollars a year. I shall be called a 
partner, but, strictly speaking, I shall be a clerk on 
a percentage.” 

“ O ! ” and Dorothy’s face fell. Then, with her 
sanguine blood mounting to her cheeks in a wave 
of pink, “ But it is a beginning.” 

“ Yes ; that is the chief good in it,” and the re- 
fined features of the father lighted an instant. 

Dorothy, meanwhile, had put the fish on the 
broiler. They spattered and hissed and emitted a 
faint, savory odor. The tea was steeping in the 
little Britannia tea-pot. Elizabeth and Joe had been 
placed in their high-chairs and pushed up to the 
table. The supper of bread and butter, fish, and 
tea was duly set in order, the three young heads 
were bowed under the father’s blessing, and the 
conversation began upon the simple stories of what 
the little ones had done and said, and of specula- 
tions on mamma’s surprise and pleasure when she 
returned. 

Dorothy went to sleep that night with her cheek 
against Elizabeth’s curly head, tears on it for Felia, 
and smiles on her lips for the dawning fortunes of 
the family. 

It was five o’clock when she awoke. The vir- 
ginal freshness of the morning fluttered the white 


26 


Dorothy Delafield. 


muslin curtains of her windows, and the virginal 
freshness of Dorothy’s heart responded. She al- 
ways awoke full of questions which her own imagi- 
nation answered. To-day, as she leaned for an in- 
stant out of the window, and looked under the cool 
greenness of the apple-boughs, she asked herself 
how the waters of the western lake looked, whither 
Felia was to go. 

“ Fond du Lac,” said Dorothy; ‘‘ I wish I could 
see. the place. I wonder if it is large and full of 
life, and — ” 

That, and in a young heart — its largeness, its 
greatness, its magnificence, its pitiful impossibilities. 
It summed up to Dorothy all she had not, all she 
wanted, a great deal that she and no other human 
being ever could have. But that mattered little 
then. While we are fond of saying that we would 
not live our past lives over, do we ever say, except in 
moments of temporary, deep discouragement, that 
we would, if we could, shorten the full span of the 
days and years to come ? 

Dorothy knew that she would not ; for every day, 
with her ardent and ambitious nature, she was look- 
ing for a great and signal change in her history ; 
with a vein of practical common sense running side 
by side with her imagination, she did well all the 
many vexing and often heavy tasks imposed on her 
young strength. She was lithe and tall and plump, 
all color and glow. And it never occurred to Mr. 
or Mrs. Delafield that Dorothy could be tired or 
overworked. 

She dressed herself quietly and expeditiously 
now, lest she should waken the little Elizabeth, and 


Dorothy Delafield. 


27 


creeping past her father's room, descended to the 
kitchen. The ashes were quickly let out of the 
cooking-stove, the fresh well-water was drawn, and 
the kettle filled ; then the table was set, and by six 
o’clock the cat-fish, left unbroiled from the evening 
meal, were hissing over the glowing coals ; the 
potatoes were boiling, and Dorothy could run out to 
the gate in the interval — for the crack of Job’s long 
whip was heard, and the stage, resplendent with 
red and gilt, was rolling past, freighted with Felia. 
Dorothy’s heart gave a suffocating bound, the color 
flashed on her face and receded. 

Felia was her only friend, the only girl to whom 
she had opened the tenderness of her self-reliant 
nature. Dorothy stood at the gate smiling, while 
the tears ran down her face ; and Felia, radiant 
with the prospect of her journey, smiled back, as 
Job and his passengers careened round the corner. 

Poor proud little Dorothy — proud with an in- 
stinctive pride she was not old enough to define, 
lonely with a helplessness of aching sympathy and 
affection for somebody — whom she did not know. 

She rolled her hands over and over in her long 
gingham apron, till she suddenly found hands and 
apron all in a knot together at her waist, and then 
she laughed at her awkwardness. Laughing was 
Dorothy’s most princely blessing ; she could always 
laugh. She had much of the stoicism of the work- 
ing-classes. It never once occurred to her that she 
could sit down just then and think of her friend 
and her loss. No ; she walked along the boarded 
walk leading from the gate to the door, her head 
slightly thrown back, a habit she had always had, 


28 


Dorothy Delafield. 


from her babyhood, when she wanted to repress 
tears. Unluckily, a scorching odor told her that 
the fish had burned. Ten minutes later, when Mr. 
Delafield came down stairs to breakfast, he found the 
fish a little broken and scraped-looking, but other- 
wise none the worse. Dorothy just then was draining 
her potato kettle, and as the last few drops of w^ater 
oozed out she lifted the kettle dexterously, Irish 
fashion, shook the potatoes gently to allow the con- 
fined steam to escape from their mealy centers, and 
then, in a mist of steam, like Venus in her circum- 
ambient cloud, she set the kettle on the stove, and 
ran to kiss her father. 

“ Is breakfast ready, Dorothy? ” 

“ Quite ready, papa; I will just run up and help 
Joe and Elizabeth finish dressing. Every thing 
will be ready in five minutes.” 

But Joe and Elizabeth were having a downright 
quarrel. 

“Joe wants to boss me all the time, Dorothy, 
and he sha’n’t, shall he ? ” 

“ No, no; Joe wouldn’t do that, that wouldn’t be 
manly. Tell Dorothy what the matter is;” this, 
while she buttoned the layers of waists at Eliza- 
beth’s back, and looked lovingly and reproachfully 
at Joe. 

“ Joe said I was a cross-patch and a tattle-tale ; 
but he pulled my hair, and then I said I would tell 
you, and so I will,” and Elizabeth looked defiantly 
at Joe. 

“ She ought to have those babyfied curls cut off 
then,” said Joe. 

“ She shall,” answered Dorothy emphatically and 


Dorothy Delafield. 


29 


cheerily. “ That was an excellent thought of yours, 
Joe,” flatteringly. Joe sidled up to Dorothy, and 
looked at Elizabeth repentantly and triumphantly. 

“ It is awful nonsense being a girl, aint it, Doro- 
thy ? ” 

“ No ; ” and then Dorothy fired, and then she 
laughed. “ But it is nonsense for poor little Eliza- 
beth to have to cry over those curly knots every 
morning. Now come, children,” she said, with the 
benignant tenderness of a mother, “ come, for papa 
is waiting.” 



30 


Dorothy Delafield. 


lU. 

I T was eleven o’clock in the morning. The ar- 
biters of Quincy’s destiny were closeted to- 
gether in a comfortable office on Broadway. The 
bell of Trinity had just struck. The whistle of the 
ferries could be heard on the river. Above^all the 
multitudinous sounds which give New York her 
noisy individuality, the prolonged serge of murmur- 
ing life and rattle and rumble of lumbering vehicles 
entered the windows with a more aggressive roar 
than usual. 

“ Mr. Maxim’s train must be late,” said one of 
the three gentlemen who occupied the apartment. 

But at that moment the door opened, and Mr. 
Joshua Maxim entered. He was the employee, and 
the other gentlemen were his employers. Never- 
theless, the respectful silence which reigned for a 
moment, the cordial good-morning which followed, 
and the composed and withal deliberate manner 
with which Mr. Maxim deposited his soft felt hat, 
and then the compact members of his body, betok- 
ened power on the part of the agent of the Quincy 
iron-mills. It was a power purely personal, a power 
quick to measure risks, to defy fortune, to be 
supremely indifferent under the cover of a serene 
affability, or a blunt recklessness to the opinions of 
every body except those of Mr. Joshua Maxim. 
He respected only his own mental and moral’ meas- 
ures of every man present. Side by side with this 


( 


Dorothy Delafield. 31 

was their value to him in dollars. It was the good 
fortune of Mr. Maxim that his personality never 
suggested the need of dollars or a consciousness of 
their efficacy. Yet no one even persumed to offer 
him less than the market value for any service he 
performed. Nevertheless, under his management 
the Quincy mills returned larger dividends and 
gave promise of magnificent fortunes. The owners 
knew that the demand for their nails grew larger and 
larger. Next week, though it was summer, every 
one of their twenty puddling-furnaces would be 
lighted. By early autumn they would have to build 
a second blast-furnace. Quincy should become one 
of the great iron manufacturing centers of the 
Union. Mr. Maxim was certainly the man to for- 
ward their interests. 

This Mr. Joshua Maxim knew just as well as they 
did. He also knew that he was a good man to for- 
ward his own interests. 

“ Well, Mr. Wetherall, I have a very encouraging 
report to make to-day.” This to the largest stock- 
owner in the mills, a tall, slender man of middle 
age, with a head prematurely gray, an eye express- 
ive, grave, kindly, but reserved ; a man to whom 
his share in the Quincy mills had fallen by inherit- 
ance, and who, in his heart, considered iron a bore, 
and Mr. Maxim a necessary but unwelcome confrere. 

“ I am having the furnaces cleaned preparatory to 
lighting. All the nailers are at work. The new 
furnace is progressing, and there is a regular influx 
of English and French Canadians. So much more 
labor than we could expect in these troubled times 
has enabled me to hire the men a quarter less than 


32 


Dorothy Delafield. 


I had expected. That is, therefore, clear gain.” Mr. 
Maxim rubbed his hands, he tilted his chair against 
the wall, and continued : “ Now there is the store; 
I have made the best arrangements of all for your 
interests there. You remember that young-looking 
man, Delafield, whom we employed a half dozen 
years ago when we so quietly brought about his 
brother’s failure, and the whole family went down 
with the crash ? ” 

Mr. Wetherall moved uneasily, as if a glass reveal- 
ing his own future were suddenly presented for him 
to glance into. 

“ The poor dog,” Mr. Maxim continued, “ works 
as if on a wager already ; but I have adopted a plan 
for getting more out of him still — a lean horse for a 
long race — eh, gentlemen? The poor fool, you 
know, spoiled his prospects in life by an early mar- 
riage, and he is just as fated as a ship that has 
sprung a leak in the bow. If ever a man was gifted 
he is. He speaks like an orator when his tongue 
is unloosed ; he sings his babies to sleep on Sundays 
with hymns he composes as he sings. He is a very 
Puritan in his conception of the springs of morality 
in himself, and covers with a gospel veil of charity 
the short-comings of others. It’s the greatest mys- 
tery to me how a man like that can stand behind 
the counter and weigh pork and sugar one minute, 
and measure off calico the next, and draw more of 
those rough practical men around him and sell to 
them, too, than any other clerk in Quincy.” 

“ His philosophy, perhaps, is of a kind that em- 
braces two worlds,” said Mr. Wetherall, a little 
dryly. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


33 

“There is not enough premeditation about what 
he does for that,” replied Mr. Maxim. “ He does 
believe in two worlds, as you express it, taking the 
Bible for his rule and all that, but that is not what 
I mean. It’s an exquisite sense of suitability, 
adaptability. Why, if Delafield walked in here this 
minute he would appear the finest gentleman of us 
3^11 — but, bah ! I dare say some of those greasy 
black furnace men are sparring with him at this 
moment, calling him Rob, and he is smiling and 
telling them a yarn that makes them crack their 
sides with laughter. He is a perennial Shakespeare 
in his comprehension of human nature.” 

“And yet doesn’t understand your schemes?” 
said the eldest Mr. Wetherall. 

Mr. Maxim frowned, and then said, “ His eyes are 
always blind to self-interest ; that is his idiosyn- 
crasy.” 

“ What do you pay him ? ” asked Mr. Wether- 
all. 

“ That’s the joke of it,” and Mr. Maxim laughed 
facetiously. “ He is worth four thousand to you if 
he is worth a cent, and the poor fool thanked me 
for my generosity when I told him that I had been 
watching his faithfulness, etc., etc., for a long time, 
and that if he would bend to the work with still 
more of a will I thought I could see the way clear 
to giving him a small percentage. It will amount 
to an extra thousand ; he has been living on eight 
hundred — God only knows how ! with prices as they 
are, and sickness, and a growing family. But I 
also put a service of five years on these terms in 
the contract. Then he hesitated, for he has a wife 
3 


34 


Dorothy Delafield. 


with as much pride as he has humility, and she 
wants to leave Quincy.” 

“Why?” asked the three partners in unison, for 
Quincy’s wealth to them lay in a sober and perma- 
nent population. 

“ Well, to tell the truth, she isn’t a Quincyite any 
more than her husband, in the usual acceptation of 
the term.” 

“ I should like to meet her, then,” said the 
second Mr. Wetherall, a small man with a face 
as refined as a woman’s, but with a penetration that 
indicated a business acuteness equal to Mr. Max- 
im’s. 

“ She is worth meeting,” said the agent ; “ one of 
those women with a straight, square brow that 
droops over her eyes. She looks like a lioness.” 

“ And the whelps,” asked the third partner, who 
enjoyed the gossip of the agent, apparently from 
the same mental and physical point of view. 

“ They are too young to tell much about. The 
eldest is a girl. I guess she is a mixture.” 

“ Then I pity her,” said Mr. Wetherall. 

“ They are all to be pitied,” said the agent ; “ but 
the almighty dollar ! It’s the law of the nineteenth 
century, and of all centuries, for that matter, to hold 
a man down and use him just as far as he will be 
held down and used.” 

“ Doesn’t your worm squirm a little? ” asked the 
youngest partner. 

“ By jove, I wish he did, then I would feel he 
was a worm.” 

A look for a moment passed over Mr. Maxim’s 
face that had something of solemnity in it. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


35 

“ Sometimes, when I have been watching him, I 
feel as if Jesus Christ lived again.” 

The elder Mr. Wetherall rose and paced the floor. 
Presently he said : 

“ Maxim, treat that man like a gentleman, and 
add five hundred to his salary over and above the 
percentage.” 

“ It can’t be done ; the times are too hard,” said 
Mr. Maxim, repenting his ingenuousness. 

Add it,” said Mr. Wetherall, “ or we will refuse 
to double your five thousand.” 

No, no,” interposed the youngest brother, while 
the second remained a silent listener ; “ it is Maxim’s 
game, and if Delafield is all he describes him we 
can show him this charity later. We don’t want to 
lavish our generosity all at once.” 

“ Charity ! ” expostulated the eldest brother, and 
then, finding himself unsupported, and with a sud- 
den recurrence of the indifference which was the 
distinguishing weakness of his character, he pres- 
ently withdrew from the office. 

It was six o’clock when the afternoon train from 
New York paused a minute at Denham to allow the 
passengers for that small station and the neighbor- 
ing town of Quincy to alight. The day was a sultry 
one, in the latter part of June. The sun’s rays 
gilded the dust in the two or three roads which 
converged at the station, and made long golden 
avenues under the maples planted along the way- 
sides. Job’s stage was there, and its half-dozen 
passengers looked hot and wilted through the win- 
dows. Job was in a cross mood, and while he sat 
on his perch, waiting to see if still another passenger 


36 


Dorothy Delafield. 


would not make his appearance, Mr. Maxim dark- 
ened the door-way of the little unpainted station, 
and beckoned to a coachman keeping guard over 
a fine pair of dark bays fastened to a roomy, shining 
buggy. The coachman came forward with a curve, 
sending a cloud of dust into the stage and far 
above it. 

Mr. Maxim stepped into his carriage, his man 
touched the horses, and away they flew, leaving 
another cloud of dust for Job and his passengers, 
and just as Mary Ann Prout toiled into sight 
through the lately occupied door, a long linen dust- 
er covering her tall, unshaped figure, a large band- 
box in one hand and a carpet-bag in the other. 

“ Get in, get in quick,” shouted Job, “ and we will 
give that sleek rascal some of his own coin.” 

The two or three men inside ha-ha-ed an approv- 
ing laugh. 

Mary Ann meanwhile deliberately put in first her 
band-box, then her carpet-bag, and had planted her 
solid foot on the step, when Job, his patience ex- 
hausted, cracked his whip over the horses and threw 
Mary Ann headlong into the powdery road. She 
rose uninjured, but besmeared with dust from head 
to foot, her honest freckled face a sight to behold. 
The delay was sufficient to give Mr. Maxim the ad- 
vantage, but Job’s ire was up, and away sped the 
horses, the dust flying, the trunks creaking, the 
passengers on the qui vive to see whether the angry 
Job was as good as his word. 

Mr. Maxim looked out of the back of his carriage 
at length, to see a pair of panting, sweating horses 
close upon him, a rolling red mass rocking behind 


Dorothy Delafield. 


37 

them, and a volume of black dust circling in great 
clouds. 

“ Eh, there, stop your horses,” he cried, com- 
mandingly. 

Job’s answer was another crack of his whip. On 
he came with his stage, like a huge dromedary ; he 
turned slightly out, not so far but that he grazed 
the shining wheels of the buggy — and then, as he 
passed, but apparently through the merest inad- 
vertence, the two bays received a cut across their 
backs which set them to prancing, and rendered 
them almost unmanageable. A loud laughing and 
clapping in the stage answered the estimate of Job’s 
feat, and gauged the popularity of the agent. 

“ Stop, Sam, stop till that infernal dust and noise 
are out of sight. Who were in that stage ? ” 

“ Don’ know, sir.” 

“ Every man shall lose his place. Before you go 
to bed find out who were in that stage.” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

Meanwhile the occupants of the forward vehicle 
were loud in their expression of defiance. 

“ You’ll lose your job, you will ; old Maxim never 
forgives nor forgets,” said one man to his com- 
panion. 

“ I don’ care if I do, next week’ll see me in Vir- 
ginny, job or no job. Old Maxim’ll never handle 
my pay ag’in ; darn him.” 

“And I say darn ’im, too! ” said the usually mild 
voice of Mr. Prout. “ Here iron’s boomin’ and 
prices raisin’, and I cut down a quarter instid of riz 
as I ’spected. Ef I didn’t own my ’ouse and lot I’d 
go to Virginny or California or som’r’s else. A town 


Dorothy Delafield. 


38 

with one wheel — and all on us spokes a revolvin’ 
round that rich hold ’ub — I declare it’ll serve ’em 
right ef iron goes down with a boom ; it will, an’ ’e 
goes with it.” 

Mary Ann looked in surprise and admiration at 
her father, for a speech of the above length was a 
remarkable effort for him. 

As for Job, now that he was apparently ahead of 
the offending power, he allowed his horses to abate 
their speed, and it was at the usual hour in the gray 
of the advancing twilight that he drove through 
Quincy, and deposited his passengers at their re- 
spective homes. 

The tale soon spread to the Company’s store, and 
by nine o’clock it had been repeated a score of 
times in that village center of gossip and trade. 

The store was a long, rambling building, begin- 
ning at one end in the Company’s office, which was 
attached to the dry goods end of the store ; then fol- 
lowed hardware, then the groceries, then a butcher- 
shop had been added, then a room for transactions 
in coal, and, lastly, the long line was terminated by 
the stables. The building was not unlike an open 
telescope in the disposition of its different parts — 
say rather it was the Quincy iron works’ microscope, 
under whose lives the small expenditures of all of 
its employees passed ; its dissecting room, in which 
were cut and examined all the family bills ; for in- 
stance, what Mr. Trout’s family ate, what they 
wore, what they spent in luxuries: result, Mr. 
Trout’s wages can be cut down one quarter. This 
Company’s store was the Quincy iron works’ labora- 
tory, where quantities were weighed, where quali- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


39 


ties were noted, where combinations were made, la- 
beled, Extract of Iron Company’s generosity, in the 
shape of a dress of cheap calico to Mr. Front’s wife ; 
Essence of Iron Company’s liberality, in bequest of 
fifty dollars to each of the five churches. The Com- 
pany’s store was rather a modern stock-broker’s 
office in microcosm. Their corners were made on 
flour, molasses, butter, pork, on all the necessaries of 
life, inevitably ; for there was no other store in 
Quincy from which to buy. No peddler or nailer 
or plumber or laborer was engaged to work in the 
Quincy works unless he pledged himself to buy at 
the Company’s store, and the Company’s store only. 
The store was an integral part of the mills ; the 
wages earned in the mills were expended in the 
store with a profit to the Company that gave them 
a margin of twenty per cent, on all that was sold. 
The store was a cheerful little race-way that would 
have served to carry money from the mills to its 
owners, but, managed by their agent, its prices con- 
trolled by his will, its monopoly secured by the 
forced failure of any other store that dared start, it 
was only a little stream that digressed for a short 
distance, and then emptied its waters into the com- 
mon reservoir. Outside of the whisky cellars and 
grog-shops, it was the pleasantest resort in Quincy ; 
it even vied with these places in its attractions, for 
it always gave a welcome to any man who carried 
either a due-bill or a pocket-book with money in it. 
In winter it was heated by huge cylindrical stoves, 
placed at intervals down its entire length, whose 
sides and breadth and circumference were labeled 
with all qualities of tobacco expectorations. At 


40 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Christmas-tide drawers upon drawers were filled 
with rectangular blue packages packed with the 
favorite weed, one of which was given to every cus- 
tomer who bought so many dollars’ worth of goods. 
Six cents’ worth of tobacco was a not unfair gift for 
a dollar and twenty cents profit on the six dollars’ 
worth of goods purchased. 

On the summer evening of which we have spoken 
all the doors stood wide open. The small windows, 
which extended in a straight line along the rear, 
were also open ; but not a breath of air fluttered the 
goods on the counters, or breathed against the 
cheeks of the weary clerks. Since five in the morn- 
ing, with a half hour’s interval for their meals, they 
had been there ; they would remain till midnight, 
for it was the time of the “ long pay.” There were 
women with babies in their arms leaning heavily on 
one hip, as they bargained for the bright calicos or 
cheap lawns. There were small boys of twelve ex- 
pectorating as they walked, their hands in their 
pockets, their flat bare feet thudding along the floor 
as they followed in the wake of some garrulous 
whisky drinker. There were furnace men, their 
pipes in their mouths, the long columns of smoke 
curling up before every counter as their owners loi- 
tered and stared or bought, their flannel or checked 
shirts open at the front, exposing hairy breasts. 
The bosses were there, bosses of all kinds, their 
white shirt fronts, their clean collars and spruce 
ties, the general look of neatness in the case of 
some contrasting with the blackened faces, grimy 
hands, and soiled clothes of their subordinates. 

“Two pipes and a paper of terbacker,” said a 


Dorothy Delafield. 


41 


piping voice from a head just peering over the 
counter, a frousy red little head. 

“ Here they are, my little girl,” said Mr. Dela- 
field, as he placed them before the diminutive cus- 
tomer. 

“ An’ a quart o’ ’lasses,” as she lifted a small tin 
bucket to the counter. 

“ Any thing else ? ” cheerily, as this toothsome 
article was placed before her. 

“An’ two pound o’ pork.” 

“ Any thing else ? ” 

“An’ six cents wuth o’ snuff.” 

“ And is that all ? ” asked the seller, with a bright 
smile. 

“Yes, sir; ” and the small girl, leading by the 
hand a boy of four, who carried the molasses, 
walked out. 

“ Them childern are as thick as flies to-night,” 
said a shrewd boss spectator to Mr. Delafield. 

“ Hearn about Prout, Delafield ? ” 

“ What about him ? ” 

Mr. Delafield had heard a dozen times already. 

“ Why, Front’s discharged. He’s as quarrelsome 
and independent as you please to-night — talked loud 
ag’in the agent ” — this in an undertone — “ he’s on 
a regular bender already, up the hill,” and the man 
pointed significantly with his thumb over his 
shoulder. 

Mr. Delafield ’s face grew a shade graver as he 
replied : 

“ They will keep it up over there till daylight, I 
warrant. I wish the Company had the monopoly 
of the whisky.” 


42 


Dorothy Delafield. 


It’s the only thing they can’t tech, aint it ? 
Whisky’s king even over the iron works, eh ? ” 

“What will you have to-night, Mr. Stillwell?” 
said Mr. Delafield, respectfully. 

“ Wal, I want to s’prise my woman with a new 
dress. My pocket’s full to-night, an’ ef it gits empty, 
why, I don’t know but the Company’s bound to 
keep me. They’ve shut us all up here in this hol- 
ler with no other lookout ’n them mills, an’ ef I 
spend this pay, why. I’ll take out a due-bill on the 
nex’.” 

“ What shall the dress be, Mr. Stillwell?” 

“ Wal, I’m dependin’ on you ; you know what’s 
in the store, and you know what pleases the women, 
so show your goods up.” 

Mr. Stillwell rattled his money in his pocket, and 
walked off toward the dry goods end, Mr. Delafield 
following him round the counter. 

“ Now, here is something that ought to look well 
on a buxom woman like Mrs. Stillwell.” Mr. Dela- 
field held up a piece of lawn covered with large 
purple roses. “ Mrs. Stillwell has a good figure, 
she’s large. How will it do?” and Mr. Delafield 
held it extended and looked at it contemplatively. 

“ Wal ” — the purchaser’s head was held a little to 
one side, his eyelids straightened to a narrow line 
over his shrewd eyes — “ do you think it’s nateral ? ” 

“ Why not ? that’s a running vine — the leaves — 
now look at them, they are real thrifty green leaves 
— large, with scalloped edges. I should think a 
real artist had designed this.” 

“ Wal, he had better study his roses, then ; who 
ever hearn tell o’ purple roses.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


43 


“ That makes them all the rarer.” Mr. Delafield 
laughed and his customer laughed. “ How would 
this do ? ” and he held up another piece with the 
same design, only the roses were a vivid red. 

“That ’ud do better; Sallie can stand the color, 
I reckon. There aint many girls have redder cheeks 
and blacker eyes, eh, Delafield ? ” 

“ Mrs. Stillwell’s as handsome a woman as there 
is in Quincy,” said Mr. Delafield. 

Mr. Stillwell studied the roses a minute longer, 
then he inquired the price, and finally bought the 
dress. 

Then followed a long list of articles, and at the 
conclusion Stillwell’s pocket weighed thirty dollars 
less. 

“ Half my pay, by jiminy ! ” he ejaculated, as the 
bill of purchases was added up. “ Ef Sallie hangs 
’round here much the next two weeks, you jus’ let me 
know. We’ll live on the top o’ the heap one week, 
an’ we’ll starve the nex’, and so on till the nex’ 
pay. Hang them five weeks’ pay ! A feller with 
a pocketful one week, and nothin’ the other four, 
feels like a poor, cheap fool.” 

Mr. Delafield was tempted for a moment to give 
a lesson on political economy, but, first, he thought 
of his percentage, next he flung the thought away, 
and then all his impulses were brought to an end 
by the rattle of loose wheels. 

Immediately after a short, withered woman of 
about sixty entered. Her scant pink calico dress, 
which barely reached the top of her rough shoes, 
was trimmed with three rows of narrow serpentine 
braid ; a little faded shawl was pinned across her 


44 


Dorothy Delafield. 


thin shoulders, and a large green sun-bonnet shaded 
her pinched, solemn face. She walked across the 
store and up to the counter with a mincing step, 
and deposited a basket of eggs beside her. She 
leaned toward Mr. Delafield with a mysterious look, 
and inquired, 

“ Where’s Cosey ? ” 

“ Cosey ’s gone home. It’s late for you. Miss Elden.” 

“ I never sleep nights when the moon’s full, so I 
thought I might as well come and do my tradin’ 
while it’s cool. But why aint Cosey here ? ” 

Cosey was as meek an individual as ever lived. 
He was the son of the Presbyterian minister, and re- 
joiced ordinarily in the cognomen of Eliphalet. 
This old woman, “ slightly turned,” as her neigh- 
bors said, had brought her eggs and butter to the 
Quincy store for years. For some inexplicable 
reason she had selected Eliphalet as the recipient of 
her confidence, giving him a name of her own selec- 
tion, and invariably addressing him by the title of 
Cosey. 

“ Wont I do ? ” asked Mr. Delafield. 

“ I s’pose you’ll have to, but I shid think Cosey 
might ’a’ stayed.” 

Miss Elden now selected two eggs from her basket. 

“ I’ll take them eggs in pepper.” 

“ Why not tell me all that you want,” asked Mr. 
Delafield, “ and then we will reckon all your eggs 
against what you buy ? ” 

Miss Elden laid her hand on her basket and 
looked at Mr. Delafield firmly. 

“ I don’t like your way. Will you give me them 
two eggs in pepper ? ” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


45 

“ Yes, ma’am, I will,” said Mr. Delafield, obe- 
diently. 

“ How much sugar will you give me for them 
eggs ? ” 

“ About half a pound.” 

“ ril take it,” she said, grandly. “ Now, you may 
give me a dozen eggs wuth of flour.” 

The flour was weighed and placed on one side of 
the old woman, as the piles of eggs on the other 
side were made stationary with some difficulty. 

“ ril have one egg in candles.” 

“You have just six more,” said Mr. Delafield, 
looking into the basket inadvertently. 

“ I’ll take them home with me,” said the withered 
little woman with offended dignity. “ I’ll wait till 
Cosey comes to trade ’em.” 

She picked up her pepper, candles, and minute 
packages of flour and sugar, while Mr. Delafield 
hastily collected the now rolling eggs and deposited 
them in a place of safety, as her rattling little 
vehicle rolled away. 

The mill bell struck twelve as Mr. Delafield 
walked along the rough side-walk in the direction 
of his home. His face was grave. His hair fell in 
soft, fine masses over his brow, and clustered against 
his neck, as he walked hat in hand. The lines about 
his nose and mouth were slightly sharpened, bring- 
ing into relief the delicacy and sensitiveness of his 
features. His blue eye, liquid and full, and of a 
womanly sweetness, looked upon the landscape, 
flooded in the brilliant moonlight, and then up to 
the starry vault. His broad, dome-like forehead 
seemed to shelter and dignify the otherwise too 


46 


Dorothy Delafield. 


fragile contour of his face. His steps resounded in 
the stillness of the night. He looked part of a 
serene, harmonious creation. 

At midnight the sense of the material sinks into 
insignificance in the enchanting presence of a half- 
revealed landscape ; man can believe then implicitly 
in the Unseen. Thought and feeling rule. At such 
a moment the force of manhood, like that of Robert 
Delafield, asserts itself. As for his thought of the 
evening, of the fellow-beings with whom he had 
been in such apparently familiar and congenial con- 
tact, his own words clearly, contemplatively ut- 
tered, as he reached a point which commanded a 
wide sweep of land, epitomized and classified them : 

The Lord is the maker of us all.” 

It is so seldom that a man or woman is born be- 
tween the two extremes of a never-ending aggress- 
iveness or a placid acceptance of life as it comes. 
Robert Delafield belonged to neither of these 
classes, but he approximated the latter. He could 
have been a Thoreau if he had been placed in a 
wilderness, but he could never, like Thoreau, have 
voluntarily exiled himself ; he was too human in 
his sympathy for that ; neither would he have pur- 
sued a theory or a fact in nature with the subject- 
ive selfishness and warping self-consciousness of 
Thoreau. But he could have sat in a room desti- 
tute of all the amenities and domesticities of life, 
and serenely philosophized on the limit of man’s 
real wants, and held genial companionship with the 
winds. He rejoiced in a long, solitary tramp in the 
woods — the fish or game which were the .pretext 
in the beginning for the isolation being really a 


Dorothy Delafield. 


47 


matter of supreme indifference. He had by birth a 
large mental and spiritual endowment; he was as 
calmly conscious of it as any one who had been long 
in contact with him. He radically lacked, unfortu- 
nately, any warming, selfish love for his own person- 
ality. He recognized himself as a microscopic 
fragment of a great whole, rolling on symmetrically 
toward its completion in the far-off ages, and his 
honest belief was that he might as well be the frag- 
ment he was as any other fragment in any other 
place. 

Thus it was that when Mr. Maxim made his 
offer he accepted it thankfully, because it touched 
the well-being of those who had a claim on his care, 
and mighty after all, have fallen to the share of some 
one else ; at the same time, with the clearest and 
finest perception of the ulterior reasons for this 
timely assistance, Mr. Maxim neither rose nor fell 
in his estimation. His plummet had long ago 
sounded the depth of the agent’s character and 
aims. Now add to this rather exceptional passivity 
a constitutional timidity, a fondness for all those 
loftier subjects which affect eternity, a temperament 
as affectionate in its outpourings as it was possible 
for a temperament to be ; but withal, with some- 
thing of the ethereal chasteness and fragrance of 
the delicate flower of the wild-rose, and you have 
the nature of Dorothy’s father before you. His 
rightful mission was to have been a minister of the 
Gospel. There tongue, thought, spirituality, would 
have had their scope. 


48 


Dorothy Delafield. 


(SHAPITBI^ y. 


HE fervid heat of a July afternoon. The thick 



golden tops of the chestnuts that not a breath 


of air stirs. The distant glimmer of the grain-fields, 
like inaccessible El Dorados. The quiver of the 
blue air on the hills, and its opal haze in the valleys. 
The drooping paleness of the heavily scented honey- 
suckle, and the dying blushes of the late roses. The 
voiceless heat and greenness and fervor every-where. 
Ah, nothing i§ like it. nothing reaches up to its in- 
tensity, except the imaginative passion and ardor of 
an unexhausted and richly dowered heart. 

It was three o’clock of such a midsummer after- 
noon, but Dorothy had found a shady and cool spot 
in the angle formed by the kitchen and the main part 
of the cottage. This triangular bit of greensward was 
quite shut in by tall syringa bushes — the flowers 
were gone ; but just beyond the bushes, the trunk 
of a young cedar-tree, barked and planted, and with 
a dozen of its branches left, that made it look like 
a huge candelabra, supported a luxuriant white rose. 
The perfume floated in to Dorothy, white-robed, 
and looking like a blossom herself, as she sat beside 
a tub of water, on whose bosom floated flowers of 
every hue and description. Dorothy’s mother was 
coming home that evening. There were four hours 
still to wait. Then the sun would be below the green 
summits of the hills toward Denham ; the freshness 
of the evening would be lingering in all the little 


Dorothy Delafield. 


49 


paths around the cottage and under the boughs of 
the old orchard. The wrens, whose nest was on the 
top of the cedar trunk, and vis-d-vis to the sitting- 
room window, would be chirping their good-night. 
Dorothy intended to have all the windows open, 
the white curtains in the bedrooms looking flutter- 
ing and cool, and flowers every-where. So the three 
or four vases which the house contained, as well as 
various cups and saucers and other shallow dishes, 
were ranged around her, while Elizabeth leaned over 
the tub to hand the flowers out as Dorothy spec- 
ified them. 

“ Now, Elizabeth, we will make bouquets for each 
one of us. Suppose we begin with Joe’s ; what shall 
I give Joe?” asked Dorothy, archly. 

“Those yellow bachelor’s-buttons and Johnny- 
jump-ups,” said Elizabeth. “ I think they are both 
saucy flowers, and I am sure Joe is a saucy boy.” 

“ Sha’n’t we put a little heart’s-ease with them ? ” 
asked Dorothy. 

Elizabeth rather regretfully assented. 

“ And now I shall tell you what I will give our 
baby;” and Dorothy bent over and kissed her sister. 
“ Here is a cluster of six pure daisies, in their clean 
white dresses, just like Elizabeth’s, and with 
cheerful happy hearts, I am sure ; and they stand up 
straight, as if they had said their lessons well ; and 
they bend their heads just a little, as Elizabeth does 
when she says, ‘ Dorothy, do you love your little 
Elizabeth ? ’ Are these for you ? ” 

Elizabeth shyly shook her head in assent, much 
pleased with Dorothy’s manner of complimenting. 

“And then I will put these blue-bells with them, 
4 


50 


Dorothy Delafield. 


for they shake their skirts back and forth, just as 
Elizabeth does when she feels vain — ” 

“ O, Dorothy ! ” and Elizabeth pouted. 

“ But I will stick these tall lilies in — so — to hide 
the blue-bells, for they are proud, beautiful flowers, 
and only bow themselves gently in the wind, as Eliza- 
beth will do when she grows up, and says * How do 
you do ? ’ She will be my tall, straight, white sister^ 
too proud to be vain.” 

“ Yes, Dorothy dear,” and Elizabeth sprung up 
and threw her wet arm effusively around Dorothy’s 
neck. 

“ Now let us make you.” 

“You make me, Elizabeth.” 

Elizabeth placed her fingers on her mouth a 
minute, and then leaning over the tub, plunged 
after a great cluster of double pink roses. 

“Here you are!” she said, in triumph, shaking 
the flowers at Dorothy, who, quite as much flattered 
as Elizabeth had been, placed them in a goblet by 
themselves. 

“And here is papa,” said Dorothy, piling great 
masses of creamy and white honeysuckles into a 
pitcher. “ Now for dear mamma.” 

Dorothy’s face was full of tender love as she took 
some rich red roses from Elizabeth’s hands, and ar- 
ranged them in all sorts of graceful ways in the 
prettiest vase of all. 

“ This isn’t all of mamma,” she said, dissatisfied 
and thoughtfully. “ O, Elizabeth, bring me a saucer, 
and we will fill it full of these glorious black and 
purple pansies.” 

Soon these sumptuous, defiant, tragical flowers 


Dorothy Delafield. 


5 


were massed into a bed together, and Dorothy- 
looked eager and yet dreamy, as if she saw before 
her at that moment the object of her worshipful 
love. Then the children made other bouquets, 
so that there was not a room in the house but had 
its floral offering. Even the matter-of-fact kitchen 
table, with the dish-pan turned bottom side up in 
•the very middle of its well-scoured whiteness, was 
ornamented with a tumbler of fragrance. 

The little tea-table is set with flowers at every 
place. Tea-biscuit that Dorothy’s own hands have 
molded, delicate cake piled up on a plate refined 
with a fringed napkin, a great glass dish filled with 
golden-red raspberries and ruby currants from their 
own garden, make an inviting picture. 

The front door is wide open. Joe swings back 
and forth on the gate, rapidly crushing the starch 
out of his clean linen trousers and roundabout. 
Dorothy stands on the stoop, her hands over her 
eyes, looking up the hill, for Job has sounded his 
horn, and Elizabeth clings to Dorothy, whom she 
loves almost as a mother. Suddenly Joe cries out, 
The stage is coming ! the stage is coming ! ” just as 
Dorothy and Elizabeth see the horses come tum- 
bling over the brow of the hill. 

“ She has come ! she has come ! ” said Dorothy, 
softly, as she saw her mother lean out of the stage 
a second. Then what kisses and hugs, what a cling- 
ing and saying, “ O, mamma ! we’re so glad you are 
home, so glad ! ” as Mrs. Delafield entered the gate. 

One could see at a glance the type of woman she 
was. There was Dorothy’s fairness — she was fair 
to paleness —but the color in her daughter’s face 


52 


Dorothy Delafield. 


was entirely wanting. Under the firm, proud, and 
intellectual brow was a pair of deep-set pathetic 
gray eyes, wistful, unsatisfied, hungry. The mouth 
was like Dorothy’s, too, only straighter, and with a 
defiance in it that was stern. The whole face had a 
passionate look of pride and weariness combined 
that was pitiful, but forbade pity. There was some- 
thing to fear in the square, aristocratic curve of 
cheek and chin, and the straight lines which defined 
the profile of forehead, nose, and chin. 

“ Where Is your father,” asked the mother, flash- 
ing on Dorothy a mute inquiry in which expectation 
and disappointment blended. 

“ He hasn’t come home yet,” said Dorothy, but 
understanding until her heart ached how unavailing 
all their tumultuous welcoming had been compared 
with that which was wanted. “ But he said at noon 
that he would try and be here when you came. I 
guess the stage is a little early.” 

Mrs. Delafield’s head fell back a little, just enough 
to let Dorothy know that she was vexed. 

“ O how terrible this heat is ! And the house is 
as warm as out-of-doors. Why didn’t you keep all 
the windows closed, Dorothy, till after dark?” 

“ She wanted it to look like coming home, mam- 
ma,” said little Elizabeth. 

“ Dorothy should have more common sense.” 
And then Mrs. Delafield repented* and patted 
Dorothy. “ Dorothy, you are too romantic. O 
what a heavy air! It oppresses me.” And Mrs. 
Delafield sat down in the little room which was sit- 
ting-room and dining-room all in one. “ Dorothy ! 
Dorothy ! it is too hot for so many flowers. They 


Dorothy Delafield. 


53 

make my head ache. Take them all out of the 
room.” 

A great lump rose and stuck in Dorothy’s throat, 
but the sunny face was wreathed in smiles as she 
said, 

“ I thought they would please you, mamma.” 

“ They do please me, child, but my head aches so.” 

“ There are flowers every-where, mamma,” said 
Elizabeth, “ even in the kitchen.” 

“ Then go and take them out of the sleeping- 
rooms immediately. We shall all have headaches. 
If you had made one bouquet, Dorothy, it would 
have been very well ; one bouquet expresses just as 
much sentiment as twenty, besides all the trouble.” 

“ Ah, mamma, the trouble wasn’t any thing. 
I felt as if I couldn’t make enough, I was so happy 
to have you back.” 

And poor Dorothy, down whose face the tears 
were streaming now, threw her arms around that 
mother’s neck, who loved as truly as ever a mother 
loved, but who hurt her daughter cruelly. Dorothy 
knew why only too well. She knew it was because 
her father was not there. But just then the click of 
the gate was heard, the well-known step sounded on 
the walk, it crossed the kitchen and entered the 
dining-room, and Dorothy, whose tears left little 
traces on her pink cheeks, looked up lovingly yet 
anxiously. 

“ Well, mother, we are glad to see you.” 

No apology for the lateness, for there was a 
customer, and the business must be well finished, no 
matter what the heart craved. 

Mrs. Delafield kissed her husband as quietly as 


54 


Dorothy Delafield. 


he kissed her, and both missed the warmth and 
fullness of expression which the return demanded. 
One fervent word or look would have brought the 
wife to her feet, and she would have lavished ten- 
derness a hundred-fold. One glance of absolute 
disappointment or humiliated affection would have 
stirred the calm nature of the husband. Each had 
unlearned the sweet knowledge of an earlier experi- 
ence. Poverty and pride and disappointment had 
embittered the sweetness of this otherwise happy 
home. They made an atmosphere to breathe which 
produced an undefinable melancholy and depres- 
sion. 

The children talked till the tone of cheerfulness 
was apparently restored. Then Mrs. Delafield 
praised the biscuits and the light cake and the 
fragrant tea, till Dorothy felt she could never, never 
love her enough. When Joe and Elizabeth asked 
to be excused, and disappeared for a last romp in 
the yard, the three who were left gathered in a 
close group to discuss the new turn in their fortunes. 
The change brought a light to the mother’s eye, 
the discouragement lurking about her brow and 
mouth disappeared, her ambition was stirred ; and 
ambition and affection, with Mrs. Delafield, were 
twin sisters. 

Dorothy went to bed first that night. It is said 
that a woman’s chamber partakes of her individuality. 
But a matter-of-fact outlook of life compels the 
writer to believe that poverty often forces the finest 
type of woman to veil that individuality so that 
none but the most observing eye can detect it. 
The ordinary looker-on is satisfied with perfume 


Dorothy Delafield. 


55 


and pictures, and rich furniture and carpets, and 
these to him represent the delicate, high-bred 
woman. But have you not sometimes entered such 
a room and experienced a dissatisfaction which 
finally found its key in the disorder, the lack of 
cleanliness about brushes and towels and drawers 
and closets? Then suddenly the occupant stands 
before you, as she really is, disrobed of all this 
extraneousness. 

The other side of the picture is indefinably 
exquisite. It is like the early dawn of a summer 
morning. 

Dorothy’s chamber was a small, square apart- 
ment, with a window on the two outer sides. An 
old apple-tree brushed one of these windows 
stealthily all night when there was the slightest 
breeze. The wall was covered with a very gay 
paper, Dorothy’s own choice, and a little glaring. 
The pale green ground was resplendent with pink 
roses, which clambered up and down and every- 
where, and hung suspended from the greenest 
vines ; but it was for the roses that she had chosen 
the paper. A bed stood in one corner, fitted into 
that corner squarely and primly, but it was a spot- 
lessly white bed. Every morning the one straw 
tick was thrown over the foot-board, and shaken 
and stirred till the air permeated over and under 
and through it. What a model of neatness that 
brown painted washstand was ! The coarse linen 
towel spread over its top was always fresh with the 
straight folds of the ironing. The queen’s-ware 
crockery deserved its name, notwithstanding its 
plebeian composition, because of its immaculate 


Dorothy Delafield. 


56 

cleanliness. The bureau, with its small, mahogany- 
rimmed looking-glass, was Dorothy’s altar. Its 
straight, high top was relieved with a long fringed 
towel. Somewhere Dorothy had found enough 
pink silk from which to manufacture a pin-cushion, 
across whose top was embroidered, in distinct letters, 
“ Dorothy and Elizabeth.” On one corner of her 
bureau reposed her Bible and Methodist Hymn 
Book ; on the other the same volumes devoted to 
Elizabeth’s use. To-night the pink roses, the 
daisies, and the blue-bells further flanked the two 
sides. Flowers were the only perfumes that ever 
filled the apartment. 

Elizabeth was sound asleep, her bare feet stand- 
ing up in high-relief on the bed flooded with bars 
of moonlight, her features much like her father’s, 
though infantile still, and yet Madonna-like in their 
cleanliness and whiteness. 

“ How I love you, dear Elizabeth ! ” and Dorothy 
kneeled by the bed a minute and softly kissed the 
dimpled feet. She passed her hands across her heart 
for an instant. “ I wish I didn’t ache so here.” 
And then she arose and went to the window over- 
looking the orchard, and gazed and thought a 
long time in perfect silence. 

She had her high ambitions. The present was 
nothing if not constantly colored by the future, 
and this was not more the result of temperament 
than education. Mrs. Delafield understood the 
mold of this child. She knew that Dorothy would 
get down in the dust of self-abnegation for love. 
How she craved it showed in the sweet, tender up- 
lifting of her dark eyes when a kind word was 


Dorothy Delafield. 


57 

spoken ; in the patient, endless steps her strong 
feet took from morning till night; in the resolute 
refusal to believe evil, even though the clear, ana- 
lytic cast of her mind detected it, and judged it 
with swift accuracy. 

“ If she had a little less of this impulsive affec- 
tionatencss, a little more selfishness,” thought Mrs. 
Delafield, “ I could make her all I want her to be.” 

What a complex thing is mother-love. Unself- 
ish, and yet the incarnation of selfishness ; giving 
all, yet demanding every thing ; risking all on the 
stake of this being born of her very self, and yet 
half, perhaps more, composed of elements of which 
she has no clue. A perfect, absolute possession of 
her own, savagely claimed and owned from the first 
day of existence, clung to and yet eluding her 
grasp with each added year of life. 

Mrs. Delafield claimed Dorothy body and mind. 
Her child’s soul she consecrated, sincerely and ab- 
solutely, she thought, to the Maker of them both ; 
but if the ground of that consecration could have 
been sifted, she would have been shocked to 
discover that she knew from the first that she could 
never fetter the wings of such a soul, and that the 
higher they soared the more substantial and pro- 
ductive Dorothy’s mental development would be. 
So, though Dorothy’s household cares in the little 
home were by no means light for her years, she was 
not allowed to waste the intervening time. A book 
was always in her hand, and, whether attending 
school or kept at home when extra help was needed, 
the lessons were as regularly learned and regularly 
recited. 


58 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Dorothy had all sorts of plans for future work. 
Above and beyond every thing else she intended to 
be a great woman. Her mother expected it, her 
own ambition demanded it. What might she not 
do, if she was great and successful, for Joe and 
Elizabeth — for all of them. Visions of magnificence 
and celebrity, and all so real, were so continually 
present in her mind that Dorothy’s dreams were 
nightly colored with the glory of that untried future. 

To-night, with her heart saddened and her native 
exuberance subdued by the little wordless scene of 
the early evening, she reflected that the lack of 
money seemed to be the root of all their evil. Her 
father could never do what he wanted to do, because 
of the store. “ Because,” as he said with unvarying 
calmness, but firmness, “ because I am not my own 
master.” 

“ I will never rest till I am my own mistress,” 
asserted Dorothy’s will, and the lines of her youth- 
ful face grew firm and mature. It is money and 
independence that make all that there is of richness 
and fullness for people. Then you can love, and 
show your love. O, I feel cramped, cramped ! ” 
and Dorothy rose and flung up her arms, exclaim- 
ing, “ I do not know how to wait for it all.” 



Dorothy Delafield. 


59 


(©HAPITEI^ UI. 

D OROTHY’S physical comfort was sensibly in- 
creased by September. Betty, the housemaid, 
had been initiated in her manifold duties, but Doro- 
thy persisted in keeping the care of Elizabeth’s ward- 
robe, and of that maiden herself. There was some- 
thing satisfactory to the elder sister in the blind 
admiration and constant lavish affection Elizabeth 
manifested. Neither liked any thing better than to 
sit under the shade of the syringa bush, Dorothy 
studying, and Elizabeth beside her, every now and 
then mutely squeezing the pink, fat, motherly hand 
clasping her own more slender fingers. 

Mrs. Delafield had hoped to have Dorothy 
study with one of Quincy’s numerous ministers, 
but this plan had to be abandoned. Mr. Dancer, 
the new Dutch Reformed minister, was young. 
Mrs. Delafield had no notion of subjecting Doro- 
thy to any temptations in the way of a tutor 
lifted to a dizzy eminence because of his vocation. 
When the Presbyterian minister was asked to take 
charge of college preparatory work, he shook his 
venerable head, and demurred, first, because his 
Greek and Latin were so rusty ; and, secondly, be- 
cause St. Paul, were he alive, would certainly disap- 
prove of college education for women. One singu- 
lar fact about the Quincy clergy and the Quincy 
laity was that they never refrained from any act, 
however praiseworthy it might have been in it- 


6o 


Dorothy Delafield. 


self, except from principle. They moreover never 
engaged in any undertaking, weighty or trivial, 
except on principle. At every fireside, denomi- 
national or otherwise, the Quincyites acted with 
principle as the lever. Mr. Prout “ allers made it a 
matter of principle to never take one glass too 
many.” Mrs. Stillwell never went to donation 
parties “ ’cause of the principle involved ; ” she al- 
ways settled it with her conscience how much she 
could give to her minister’s support, and then she 
“ bided by it.” Miss Dainty said she made it a 
“ matter of principle ” to be very cautious about 
carrying news, staying as she did in “ nigh ” every 
house in Quincy one or more days every year. 

The rector, after many gentle inquiries into Doro- 
thy’s spiritual condition — and seeing Mrs. Delafield 
at once methodistically aggressive, decided that the 
work, “ most laudable in itself,” would be outside 
his “ parish duties.” As for the priest, he even 
offered his services. As for the Methodist minister, 
he knew little Latin and less Greek. As for the 
public-school principal, he had evidently made it a 
“ matter of principle ” to know nothing in the 
heavens above or the earth below, if it were not in 
his grade, and the year i860 was not the era for the 
mental dynamics of a decade later. 

Mrs. Delafield was in despair. One moment she 
warmed in favor of the priest, who now daily, but 
accidentally, met Mr. Delafield, and talked to him 
on education ; but the next she had visipns of Doro- 
thy as an abbess, and a standard example for a 
warning in the sermons of Methodist exhorters. 

Dr. Withers, hearing of the dilemma, made his 


Dorothy Delafield. 6i 

appearance one day, hobbling in as well as he could 
on the one leg left him, and supporting his cane 
with the one hand he still owned. 

“ I have undertaken about every thing that no 
one else could or would do in Quincy, and I don’t 
see why I could not manage Dorothy’s Greek and 
Latin. To be sure, I have not the continental pro- 
nunciation — and I believe that is the sine qua non 
just now. But Dorothy can get that in a month, 
and ril vouch for her entering if she has her gram- 
mar and translations. The old doctor, Dorothy, 
makes it a principle to keep what was the fashion 
in his young days, and if you could read English 
decently, when I was a boy, you could pronounce 
Latin just as well.” 

Mrs. Delafield felt some secret trepidation about 
trusting Dorothy’s Christian training, strict as it had 
been, to a learned man like Dr. Withers, and one 
armed cap-a-pie moreover with infidel lore. If 
Dorothy should become a freethinker, she would 
feel that it was a judgment on her ambition. 

She need not have feared. Dr. Withers was old- 
fashioned in more senses than one. He would just 
as soon have thought of giving Dorothy liquor till 
it intoxicated her as to disturb the serenity of a 
faith that was like a clear and running stream. 
Strictly speaking, nothing was blasphemous to Dr. 
Withers, but he would not have hesitated to say 
that it was blasphemy to stir a moment sooner 
than stern fate did it the peaceful calm of a young 
girl’s trust, and her affectionate dependence on her 
Maker. All things considered, it seemed to be in 
the line of the special providence that Dorothy 


62 


Dorothy Delafield. 


fully believed guided her daily steps that she 
should study under Dr. Withers. 

The old house which sheltered him displayed 
such an utter absence of beauty and comeliness that 
its very atmosphere seemed pregnant with the 
asceticism of primitive Methodism. No picture 
adorned the walls ; no “ tidies,” such as the young 
girls of Quincy were forever crocheting, relieved the 
backs of the straight chairs. The one little room 
where Dorothy fought and conquered her declen- 
sions, conjugations, and subjunctives was the very 
ideal school-room of a century ago. It contained 
two small windows. Dorothy learned to appropri- 
ate the one overlooking the street to herself ; the 
other, facing upon a steep flight of outside stairs, 
which led to “ Withers’s building,” she called the 
doctor’s. Opposite the outside door was another 
door, painted red, which, to Dorothy, brought up 
in the days of persecuted abolitionism, seemed red 
with the blood of martyrs ; for it led into a room 
dark and damp, but holy, because it had been the 
refuge of many a fugitive slave, bound for Canada 
via Quincy. The doctor himself sometimes sat and 
mused and looked at it, till it seemed to open, and 
one by one the scared and frightened wretches 
pass before him with, “ God bless you, massa.” The 
doctor, at such times, had a vague feeling that if 
there were a heaven he stood some chance of getting 
in. Reaching from the red door, and around the 
remainder of the side, and along the other to the 
doctor’s wooden arm-chair, were rows upon rows of 
shelves, filled with bottles labeled with unpronounce- 
able and abbreviated names. Then there was a 


Dorothy Delafield. 63 

mysterious pungent odor, as of pills and books and 
herbs, which, to Dorothy, always suggested the pyra- 
mids and mummies, and gave her a far-away sense 
that made the study of Caesar and Xenophon seem 
quite natural. She longed to have a door or window 
open during the two hours employed in the daily 
recitation, but Dr. Withers did not believe in fresh 
air, except when seated in his weather-beaten old 
buggy, and jogging along behind his shaggy Cana- 
dian pony. 

But Dorothy could never forget the view from 
her little dingy window, even though the glass had 
a marvelous fashion of suddenly breaking trees in 
two, of lifting off the tall iron chimneys from the 
furnaces, and hanging them in the air beside huge 
brick stacks. They suggested and emphasized the 
real picture, the steep bank across the street dip- 
ping into the waters of the canal ; then another 
downward slide of the same bank to the hollow, 
where all the mills spread and clustered ; then 
another bank at whose feet the Speedaway, when 
swollen by the spring or autumnal rains, roared over 
the great bowlders in its bed ; then the ascending 
and steep hills beyond, rising — rising— crowned 
with cedars and spruce, luxuriant oaks and chestnut, 
till they were lost in the clear amber coolness of 
twilight skies. Dorothy loved that picture. She 
loved to fold her cloak about her and pause in the 
doctor’s door till the wind came with a sough and 
a deep-sounding boom from out of the woods, 
whistling in and around the furnace stacks, and 
then, like a regiment of light-footed infantry, scaling 
the hill, and attacking her with a royal charge. 


64 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Whenever such a wind struck her, the desperate, 
liberty-loving spirits of the runaway slaves seemed 
to surge about her in the waves of air and sound. 
Then she rejoiced in the courage which had enabled 
her, under the stern tuition of her mother, to hold 
her own in the lilliputian political controversies 
which raged among the children of Quincy. She 
was glad her father was an abolitionist. Ah, even 
childish Dorothy could understand that there, in 
the North, everybody was beginning to think what 
Dr. Withers and her father and a handful of other 
pure souls had thought right along through years 
and years of cold and pitiless conservatism. At 
such a time Dorothy could forget her pleading to 
leave the hated Methodist Episcopal Church, her 
sighs for the flesh-pots of boss-Presbyterianism. She 
could not define it then, but that clear wind blow- 
ing on her breathed independence and endurance 
and ambition, yea, and heavenly longings. 

There was nothing to distinguish the Delafield 
home from a score of others in Quincy, where the 
difference between literacy and illiteracy was an un- 
known quantity. But it was the spot where Doro- 
thy’s nature, intense enough already, was deepening 
into a glow of effort and aspiration that paled the 
color in her cheeks, and set her heart to beating if 
a door closed suddenly, or the wind came with a 
longer swoop and howl than usual through the trees 
of the apple orchard. And how the days flew ! all 
winged together as they passed in a dreamy haze 
of concentrated effort, and separated from each 
other only as they measured off the allotted tasks 
in Greek and Latin, grammar and algebra. 


Dorothy Delafield. 65 

The evenings were passed by Dorothy and her 
mother in tough encounter with algebra and geome- 
try. And mother and daughter grew together. It 
was the most delightful winter Mrs. Delafield had 
spent since she had been a mother. The mental 
diversion prevented her from dwelling on the past or 
present. She, too, lived in the golden future, as if 
she were fifteen instead of thirty-five. She felt like 
a pilot steering a bark safely through familiar and 
narrow waters, but with her eye on a gulf beyond 
as brilliant as the Persian in the magnificence of its 
semi-historic splendor. 

There was one question which troubled Dorothy 
more and more the more she studied, the more she 
felt : Dorothy believed in God ; the whole creed 
she accepted phrase by phrase, and thought she 
grasped, if not with her understanding, yet, in 
Methodist parlance, by faith. But as for any divine 
love in her heart, any effiatus that would lead her 
to joyfully accept a missionary life, if that opened 
before her ; any burning desire to be swallowed 
up in sacrifice and suffering — Dorothy was only 
and too sadly sure that her heart was perfectly 
empty of such desires and aspirations. Mrs. Dela- 
field instinctively, or, perhaps, from absorption in 
her plan of having Dorothy a great woman intel- 
lectually, with a shining Christian character inci- 
dentally, would have been alarmed could she have 
known how all these questionings were draining 
her daughter’s vitality and repose. But what else 
could Dorothy do or think when, night after night, 
as she undressed for bed, she heard, floating up the 
hole in the floor through which the stove-pipe ran, 
5 


66 


Dorothy Delafield. 


that mother’s mellow tone, rising and falling with a 
sort of cadence as she became engaged in imploring 
the Lord for Dorothy’s salvation ; that she might 
be like Samuel, early called and early chosen ; that 
she might have a clear witness of her conversion ; 
that she might be as a brand plucked from the 
burning ; that she might not in her endeavors lose 
the Pearl of great price; that she might not at the last 
moment waken to wail with the despairing, “ Lost, 
lost ! ” and then the gentle child-like pleadings : 
‘‘ O Lord, Dorothy is a good child, illuminate her 
understanding, make her quick to learn, accurate in 
retaining ; make her a Moses, to lead us into the 
land of deliverance ; make her a queen among 
women in the peerlessness of her intellect, and the 
vigor of her efforts.” 

Poor Dorothy! she crouched beside that hole, 
fascinated with a nameless horror. The power of 
that mother’s will was acting on her, the magnetism 
of that beloved voice overpowered her. She looked 
forward to the set time for the revival meetings, be- 
ginning just after the holidays, with mingled dread 
and lonoing. All Methodists find the Lord then, 
and perhaps he would not blame her if she did not 
discover the way till then. And, ah, perhaps then 
she might not, perhaps she never should, perhaps 
she was too wicked, perhaps putting it off now for 
three years, as she was conscious she had done, she 
was one of those hardened, callous sinners the min- 
ister told about. Then, at such moments, when 
fear and longing became almost insupportable, 
Dorothy wished they had been Episcopalians ; then 
she could have put on her white dress, and kneeled 


Dorothy Delafield. 67 

before a pretty altar, and been confirmed ; for had 
not Mary Ann Prout told her that all there was to 
do was to make up your mind to be a good girl and 
love the Lord, and be confirmed. 

“ Ah,” sighed Dorothy, and wept for shame as 
she sighed, “ I could wish there was no witness of the 
Spirit. But perhaps poor Mary Ann is one of the 
lost ! ” And then predestination, with its uncanny 
election, would press in on her mind ; perhaps that 
was true, and she, try as she would, was elected to 
be damned. Ah, no; Methodism, with its conver- 
sions and altars and class-meetings, was a harrow 
for a doubting, seeking soul, but it was a bed of 
eider-down compared with a heaven from the be- 
ginning for a few. Dorothy would then cry silently, 
while the prayer rolled on in a melodious, entreat- 
ing petition, and all at once came back with the 
desire she always ended with : “ O, that we might 
all go to heaven ! Dear Lord, wont you please take 
all your children in ? ” 

It chanced one Sunday, after such a night of 
questioning and weeping, that Mr. Thompson, the 
minister, chose for his text, “ We must, through 
much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God.” 

Now, Mr. Thompson was not what would be 
called a spiritual man. He was tall, and with an 
accretion of adipose that settled itself about hands 
and abdomen, and gave him a comfortable, padded 
look, not at all in harmony with such wrestlings as 
were affecting Dorothy’s soul. He had a calm, 
perfectly unmoved expression, that always led 
Dorothy to think forcibly of those Sundays when a 
corpse lay in its coffin on the square in front of and 


68 


Dorothy Delafield. 


below the pulpit. It was the fashion in those days 
in Quincy for the face of the dead to lie exposed 
during the funeral services, and at the conclusion 
the minister would say: “You are all cordially in- 
vited to view the remains. The congregation will 
please pass up one aisle and down the other.” 
Sometimes the choir sang a funeral hymn during 
this ceremony; oftener the officiating minister 
would lean gravely on the pulpit, looking down on 
the dead upturned face before him, while his flock, 
in an audible stillness, took up their march. 

All the faces that she had thus seen were burned 
into Dorothy’s memory — the sunken sphinx-like look 
about the eyes, the subtle, changeless expression of 
all the features, the slight, pinched look about the 
nose, something that suggested that change was 
past, that ages and ages would elapse and still those 
features and that expression would remain. 

On this Sunday Mr. Thompson wore an especially 
inflexible and serene expression. In the natural 
order of things he would occupy that pulpit but one 
year more, and then the Methodist wheel of 
itinerancy would deposit him somewhere else. But 
this still expression, this Sunday, seemed to Dorothy 
one of an endless succession of past Sabbaths joined 
to an endless succession of Sabbaths yet to come. 
Mr. Thompson’s dull blue eyes never dilated, never 
emitted flashes of magnetic light. His iron-gray hair 
was always smoothed into one continuous, straight- 
shining mass, that adhered closely to his head. 
He had one gesture: his right arm was slowly lifted 
automatically from the elbow, slowly the extended 
palm with fingers all pressed together approached 


Dorothy Delafield. 69 

his smooth head, then it descended, then it almost 
touched — so nearly touched that Dorothy always 
watched to see if it would not sometime really 
reach — the even gloss of his iron-gray hair. 

The text, the even tones with which Mr. Thomp- 
son reviewed the history of the apostles, and showed 
what struggles, what persecutions, what martyrdom 
they had undergone — all this weighed heavily on 
Dorothy’s heart. The life of St. John, that one 
whom Jesus loved, was dwelt on ; how he had lived 
on through change and banishment, through nearly 
one hundred years of spiritual conflict. Finally Mr. 
Thompson urged that every one who would enter 
the kingdom of heaven, must go in through the 
narrow way, over rocks and through deep waters, 
and must wrestle, not with flesh and blood, but with 
principalities and powers. He concluded with the 
thought that the more a soul had of such conflict 
the more reason it had to suppose that the angels of 
heaven and the legions of hell were in a hand- 
to-hand encounter for its possession. 

Dorothy listened spell-bound — as one sometimes 
is with the experience a Quaker woman will recount 
in her sing-song tones, yet with clear accent and 
deep conviction. This, then, was her case: God 
wanted her ; hell sought her. Dorothy’s lips met 
in their most determined expression. Her kindled 
eye arrested Mr. Thompson’s attention. The fat, ex- 
tended hand rose and fell with more gentle unc- 
tion than usual as he drew a picture of the lambs of 
the flock seeking the path from which all went astray 
— yea, every one, because of the sinful depravity 
of our fallen human nature. Then, with an unin- 


70 


Dorothy Delafield. 


tentional tenderness, dramatic in its simplicity, he 
told the story of the sparrows, and poor Dorothy, 
loving, longing to be loved with an infinite, ever- 
lasting tenderness, reached up in spirit toward Him 
who generally seemed so much like a consuming fire, 
but once in a while did seem to part the cloudy 
terror surrounding his majestic throne, and beam 
love ineffable upon her seeking soul. 

This sermon was a mile-post to Dorothy. Great 
tribulation emphasized the Christian’s course to her 
from that moment. The perseverance of the saints 
became her favorite theme for contemplation. 
Deeper and deeper she plunged into a forest as sul- 
len as that one in which the great Italian groped, 
and she, too, before she reached her heaven, was 
destined to suffer the visions of the Inferno ; next 
the April flashes of bliss in Purgatory ; finally our 
Dorothy, also, was to soar above the mountains 
into the region of the nine heavens of the poet. 



Dorothy Delafield. 


71 


®HAPIIIBF5 UII. 

I T was the season for the donation parties. A 
donation party was the delusion concerning 
their benevolence in which three of the congrega- 
tions of Quincy annually allowed themselves to in- 
dulge. Each one of these congregations had agreed 
to pay the minister so much salary and a donation. 
The donation consisted of presents of eatables of 
all kinds to the respective ministers, and a tea- 
party on the day of the gift, which “ the whole 
congregation are cordially invited to attend.” 

Then did it appear as if that millennial time had 
arrived in Quincy “ when congregations ne’er break 
up.” The members of these flocks apparently ex- 
tended over miles of country. The announcement for 
the festival was like the judgment trump in the val- 
ley of dry bones. It was the electric quiver that re- 
animated the farmers just as they were settling down 
to their winter hibernation. It was the signal for 
rigid dissection of motives among the Quincy gos- 
sips. It was the opportunity afforded to all the 
housewives to compound .their cakes and pies and 
biscuits. It was the moment when each minister’s 
wife felt a cold shudder run down her spinal column 
as she contemplated the ordeal her house would 
undergo. Then she herself, her housekeeping, and 
her children would pass though a worse fire than 
that through which the Iroquois made their pris- 
oners run the death-race. 


72 


Dorothy Delafield. 


The day for the Methodist donation dawned 
bright and cold. Notwithstanding its clearness, the 
day was depressing ; there was a penetrating damp- 
ness in the air that foreboded an easterly storm. 
The Methodists of Quincy cheered one another, 
however, by “guessing it wouldn’t storm till ter- 
morrer.” Methodist larders were in a state of dis- 
integration. 

Mrs. Amanda Wheeler stood in her kitchen view- 
ing a cake and three loaves of bread. Her two 
children and her husband stood beside her. She 
was a bulbous-looking woman, with great absorptive 
capacity. 

“Jonas,” said Mrs. Wheeler, “do you think we 
ought ter give all three? Here’s more’n us and the 
children ’ull eat.” 

“ No, I guess not ; there’ll be plenty to give free- 
ly, and the Lord doesn’t expect of poor people 
more’n they can do.” 

“We usually .eat a loaf a meal, even when we 
only have bread and butter ’n’ tea,” mused Mrs. 
Wheeler. 

“ Well, then,” said Jonas, emphatically, “ I think 
you’ll be doin’ the square thing if you take two 
loaves. I’d leave the cake behind. We need it 
more’n Mr. Thompson. I guess he has cake ter eat 
twice ter our onct.” 

“ That’s so. Now Viola and Reginald go ’way. 
You must eat light all day, so as ter have an appe- 
tite ter-night ; there’ll be cake enough for you ter- 
night, an’ pickles an’ cheese an’ meat.” 

“An’ pie, mother?” 

“Yes, ’n’ pie, every thing. I suppose I shall be 


Dorothy Delafield. 


73 


nussin’ you ter-morrer. But it only comes once a 
year.” And Mrs. Wheeler’s watery eyes moistened, 
and her pendulous cheeks grinned. “ What d’ you 
s’pose, Jonas, the Myerses ’ull give?” 

‘‘ O, they’ll make a great show. I dare say they’ll 
be on han’ late with hams and potatoes. The 
Myerses alius comes last at a donation, pilen in 
their produce when there’s a lot there to exclaim 
about their bounty.” 

“ I’ve hearn tell the Delafields ’tends to give a 
barrel o’ flour.” 

“Let ’em do it !” exclaimed Jonas. “Let’em 
do it. Delafield’s had a raise. I s’pose he’ll be 
glad to show he can give a barrel o’ flour. He’s 
been a-fixin’ up his settin’-room, an’ givin’ Dorothy 
private lessens. I s’pose Mrs. Delafield ’ll be more 
set up ’n ever.” Jonas groaned. “ The Lord’ll be 
visitin’ their sins on some o’ the Methodists o’ 
Quincy ef thur isn’t a revivin’ from their back- 
slidin’.” 

Reginald Wheeler, a thin, pop-eyed boy of twelve, 
who stood shivering from low vitality — his clothing 
was warm if clumsy, but Reginald always shivered 
— viewed his father a moment, with his mother’s 
expression, and then said, 

“ Poppy, why don’t you git a raise ? ” 

“ Because, Reegey, the Lord, the Lord don’t 
choose ; but ” — with another groan — “ he’ll provide, 
he’ll provide ? ” 

Meanwhile the parsonage kitchen was a cheerful 
place. It was immaculate, it was always immacu- 
late. If there was one thing in whose merits Mrs. 
Thompson believed, it was soap. She scrubbed 


74 


Dorothy Delafielu. 


her floors, she scrubbed her paint, with what effi- 
cacy the long patches of pine, robbed of their 
acquired color, showed on this particular morning. 
The imperial cooking-stove shone with a spotless 
polish. The kitchen-roller displayed a length of 
unblemished crash toweling. The sparkling panes 
of the windows looked out over the clear gray sweep 
of the hills. A pure white tabby purred away on 
the brilliant oil-cloth. The mantel revealed a long 
row of kerosene lamps, loaned by various neighbors, 
for the evening’s illumination. Already Mrs. 
Brown and Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Miles had sent in 
to know if they could be of any service ; but Mrs. 
Thompson was postponing that assistance till the 
last moment. 

She was a childless woman, and consequently her 
house was always in the perfect order of a childless 
house. 

It would have been a not unpleasant task for a 
student of human nature to have accompanied Mrs. 
Thompson in a final inspection of her house, and 
meanwhile to have inspected Mrs. Thompson her- 
self. 

The cat is a maligned animal. It is always de- 
fined logically with the argument from exclusion. 
But there are some commendable feline propensi- 
ties. In Mrs. Thompson you could draw the line 
distinctly between her wild-cat ancestors, and her 
domestic-cat ancestors. In the first place, she was 
a large woman, tall and stout. Her smooth, white 
throat rose with muscular strength from her broad 
shoulders, and above the wide, yet table-land ex- 
panse of her compact bosom ; her large, pale yel- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


75 


lowish, blue eyes had the small pupils, and the 
enlarged iris of the wild-cat. Her sober, brown 
hair, arranged in two broad bands looped slightly 
over each ear, gave her for all the world the com- 
fortable velvety look of the home-loving tabby. 
Her step was not tabby’s step, for the whole foot, 
from heel to toe, struck the floor squarely when she 
walked. Nevertheless, there was a fixity about her 
gaze, a deliberateness about her movem'ents, a 
glossy, starchy look about the linen collar turned 
over the neck of her dress, which reached, without 
a furbelow, to her waist, and then fell in straight folds 
to the floor, that made you think of one of those 
quiet, purry creatures, that alternately sleep and 
blink in the sunlight, and spend the intervening 
time in slowly licking its small, curved right fore- 
paw, and applying the lubrication to its spotless 
face. Moreover, it was perfectly natural for Mrs. 
Thompson to look and walk and listen, feline like, 
to all going on about her ; but she was not treach- 
erous, notwithstanding the thin dark streaks which 
shot from the pupil through the iris, and at times 
gave her eyes a cast ; she could have pounced on 
you with your secrets, she could have clawed you 
with that large, soft' hand, but her native phlegm 
told her that it was not worth the trouble ordinari- 
ly; and the Bible she read faithfully every day, told 
her that it was contrary to social comfort and 
heavenly law. So she passed for a very exemplary 
minister’s wife, “ too silent and unsociable,” but 
such a good housekeeper, and faithful at divine 
service, regular at prayer-meeting, and unflagging 
in attendance during the revivals.” 


^6 Dorothy Delafield. 

That such .a woman dreaded the donation need 
not be said. She liked to bake and cook; her 
larder was always full of the simple plenty Mr. 
Thompson’s small salary afforded, and for any thing 
more, they both preferred the sunshine and stillness 
and each other. 

Watch her now as she goes with her even, heavy 
tread into the dining-room. The window-shades 
are not all of the same length ; she adjusts them. 
There is a streak of dust on that large cane-seated 
rocker ; she softly brushes it off with her duster. 
The frame inclosing the certificate which de- 
clares her a member of the Missionary Society by 
the payment of twenty dollars, is brought into line 
with the framed marriage-certificate, which certifies 
that John Thompson and Hannah Wilson joined 
hearts and hands in holy matrimony December 6, 
1833. Now she walks into the parlor, where a hun- 
dred conjugal knots have been tied. Its ingrain 
carpet, in large blue and red medallions, shows little 
sign of wear. Its hair-cloth settee shines in its 
slumbrous blackness, as it defines a straight black 
line along the white wall. In one corner the cavern- 
ous hair-cloth rocker, whose back is covered with 
an expansive snowy crocheted tidy, describes an 
isosceles triangle. A mahogany table, with a black 
and white streaked marble-top, stands between the 
front windows, and holds an immense, unsullied 
gilt-edged family Bible, a Discipline of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, an album, and a lamp. 
There are six straight-backed chairs. Mrs. Thomp- 
son would have been sincerely distressed had 
there been less than six, for then the parlor .set 


Dorothy Delafield. 


77 

would have been broken. They stand two by two, 
slightly turned toward each other, as if they were 
so many undertakers. The white wooden mantel 
is flanked at either end by candelabra, whose glass 
appendages occasionally catch a gleam of sunlight, 
and break into happy scintillations. They preside 
over a clock, which exactly divides the space be- 
tween them. 

This parlor suits Mrs. Thompson. When she 
thinks of heaven, she always comes out of the 
revery with this solemn orderly room visualized. 

Now she steps into the hall. Nothing is there to 
break the octagonals of the black-and-white oil- 
cloth, or the straight narrow sweep of the stairs, 
with their red and green and brown Venetian car- 
peting. She heaves a sigh as she thinks of to-mor- 
row morning. 

Let us enter her bedroom. One has there a 
sense of scope, for the house stands beside the. 
church, on the crest of a high hill. The room 
faces east, and is flooded with light. The four- 
poster maple bedstead has a great thick white 
bolster and puffy pillows, and reaching the valance 
on either side is the bed quilt, worked in the pattern 
of the rising sun. There is a rocking-chair beside 
one of the east windows, and it is there that Mrs. 
Thompson daily rocks and sews, and blinks and 
purrs. The bureau is much like Dorothy’s in its 
arrangement, minus the flowers. Little strips 
of carpet cover the ingrain here and there 
where there is much stepping— for Quincy thrift 
seldom exposed an entire carpet to the vulgar tread 
till it was in an advanced stage of old age. As for 


78 


Dorothy Delafield. 


the wash-stand, its purity and appliances were 
seldom disturbed when Mr. and Mrs. Thompson 
were alone. It was more convenient to perform 
the morning ablutions in the large closet off the 
kitchen. 

The guest chamber was much like the one I have 
described, except that its bed was adorned with a 
quilt given as a parting present by the congregation 
the worthy pastor and his wife had served before 
coming to Quincy. Each block was indelibly 
stamped with the name of the person who had 
made and presented it, and it was in the squirrel 
pattern. Very impossible animals they were, skip- 
ping and posing in straight lines up and down the 
bed. But the squirrel pattern was one that had 
met with general approval, as nearly every Method- 
ist family in Quincy had a squirrel quilt in a greater 
or less stage of advancement. Even Dorothy had 
twenty pink and green and blue squirrels made and 
safely stowed away in the lower drawer of her 
bureau. 

By four o’clock on that November afternoon the 
food for the supper and the surplus for the minis- 
ter began to arrive in a steady stream. When the 
barrel of potatoes and Mr. Delafield’s flour came, 
Mr. Thompson ran out in his bare head and helped 
roll the substantials in with a will. There were 
piles of cake, from gingerbread to pound-cake ; 
pies of all variety of thickness, rolls and loaves of 
bread, sugar, tea, coffee, boiled meats, and pickles, 
a great preponderance, in short, of quickly perish- 
able food. 

The sitting-room was transformed, by its two 


Dorothy Delafield. 


79 


long tables, groaning under their motley loads ; 
and Mrs. Wheeler, and a half-dozen other ‘‘ mem- 
bers,” were in the kitchen assorting the food and 
taking an invoice of the donation, with the names 
of the givers as they came in. 

“ There’ll be plenty an’ to spare,” said Mrs. 
Wheeler, whose eyes rolled greedily back and forth 
over the sweets and substantials. 

“ What did you decide to bring, Mrs. Wheeler ?” 
asked Mrs. Myers, nudging Mrs. Miles slyly, as she 
inquired. 

“ I brought more’n I ought to, if I hed followed 
my principles. By rights I hadn’t ought to a 
brought any thing, working here at the dishes and 
tables five or six hours.” 

“ There’s a plenty glad to do that. I’m sure, an’ 
providin’ more’n their own supper, too,” said Mrs. 
Miles. 

“ Where aire they, then ?” asked Mrs Wheeler, 
her cheeks trembling, as she cut into a loaf of bread, 
with emphasis. “ Where aire they, then ? They aire 
some of the fair-weather Christians, I s’pose. It’s 
one thing to be offerin’, an’ another thing to be 
doin’.’’ 

Meanwhile Methodism, individualized, was gradu- 
ally gathering in the parlor and bedrooms of the 
parsonage. 

“ Walk right up stairs and take off your things,” 
said Mrs. Thompson, as she met from time to time a 
“ member” in the hall. “ Make yourself at home.” 

“ Good-afternoon, Mrs. Stillwell, I am glad to see 
you,” as that lady appeared at the foot of the 
stairs. “ Come in, come in ! ” and Mrs. Thompson 


8o 


Dorothy Delafield. 


led her guest across the parlor to the honored seat 
of all, the great black rocker ; “ sit down, Mrs. 
Stillwell.” 

“ Thank you, no ; I’ve been a-settin’ all day ; 1 11 
Stan’ and look ’round. Many come yet ? ” 

“ The Wheelers are all here.” Mrs. Thompson 
blinked, and Mrs. Stillwell opened both palms flat. 
Had Mrs. Thompson done more than blinked, Mrs. 
Stillwell would have said the next day that the 
only objection she had against the minister’s wife 
was her “ discussin’ the members.” As it was, the 
masonic recognition that passed between them was 
both flattering and satisfactory to Mrs. Stillwell. 

And now the wheels of a carriage are heard. 
There is a rustling among the ladies already gath- 
ered in solemn, critical-eyed groups in the parlor. 
Upper lips are straightened across upper teeth, and 
mouth corners are puckered until the proper ex- 
pression of dignity that will not be tampered with 
appears. Mrs. Thompson almost purrs audibly. 
She does not open the door for the fat lady coming 
up the walk, but she stands just across the threshold 
of the parlor to receive her. What a benevolent, 
motherly face ! The head just protrudes above the 
great mink cloak, reaching far below the generous 
waist. The large, soft brown ox-like eyes take in 
all of those stiff members with a benignant, greet- 
ing expression. Then Miss Priscilla Morton takes 
both of Mrs. Thompson’s hands in hers, and says, 

“ I hope I find you well to-day ? ” 

“ Quite well, I thank you.” 

“ How- do you do, Mrs. Stillwell ? I hope you are 
better of your rheumatism.” 


DoRorav Delafield. 8i 

And so she goes the round, knowing, with the 
tact and memory of a cultured woman, just what to 
say to each of her fellow-members. 

In five minutes conversation is general, and even 
though the topics are limited to measles and crops, 
the weather, and now and then the fate of some 
backsliding Methodist, still the conversation, no 
matter how trivial, is better than golden silence in 
a company met for purposes of sociability. 

The respectable stillness which has reigned up 
stairs is now broken by loud thumps, by screams 
of laughter — for “ up stairs ” from time immemorial 
has been given to the “ young folks.” The fun 
grows hilarious as “ pillows and keys ” and “ drop 
the handkerchief” and “post-office” are played in 
the various rooms. Up stairs the gregarious instinct 
asserts itself until Reginald Wheeler and Polly 
Stillwell find themselves lovingly ensconced to- 
gether in Mrs. Thompson’s own rocker. They 
sway gleefully back and forth, and presently 
Reginald kisses Polly and tells her he is going 
to marry her when he “grows up.” Polly is 
agreed, and poor little Susie Miles, who hears 
all these promises, and who has not been invited 
by any young boy to rock with him, puts her 
fingers in her mouth, and looks lonely. Elizabeth, 
conscious and beautiful in a white dress and broad 
pink sash, is just now condescendingly placing her 
pillow before Willie Taylor, who falls down on it 
delightedly and gives Elizabeth, in his eagerness, 
such a sounding kiss, that she turns suddenly and 
slaps him in the face. 

And so the plays go on ; every one with some- 
6 


82 


Dorothy Delafield. 


thing in it that defines distinctly the bisexual con- 
dition of humanity. All the mothers and fathers 
down stairs consistently Methodistic in pointing 
out the horrors and pitfalls in dancing and laughing 
and sparring together over the amorous tendencies 
and juvenile predilections they witness among their 
youngsters above. The dancing part of the Quincy 
community laughed at the vulgar, boisterous, and 
kissing games of the non-dancing portion, ; the non- 
dancing community held up their hands over the 
immoralities and frivolities of those who danced. 

Was there a boy or girl in Quincy who would 
have had a happy or healthful youth, had they 
grown up without a single temptation to any of the 
juvenile weaknesses, or any indulgence in games 
whose charm was in propinquity, but was always 
defined as the desire for and delight in exercise. 
The world is very slow in accepting as one of the 
great lessons of its riper culture and endeavor, that 
temperance may have myriad applications. The 
charm and the sweetness of the sociability up stairs 
lay in the fact that it was not old enough for defi- 
nition. The primness and rawness of the sociability 
down stairs was the absolute refusal on the part of 
any one except the three or four real ladies and gen- 
tlemen present to take any other than the first place. 
The Quincy boss system was in all the churches. 

Although Miss Priscilla Morton thawed the ice in 
the little parlor from time to time, yet just as soon 
as its atmosphere was allowed a minute’s quietness, 
congealing processes began again, and “ I am just 
as good as you ” was the expression on the faces of 
the majority of those assembled, ostensibly not for 


Dorothy Delafield. 


83 

purposes of self-assertion, but to have the Gospel 
pleasure of ministering. 

Mr. and Mrs. Delafield and Dorothy now entered 
the little parlor. Robert Delafield’s face is all 
aglow with pleasure at meeting friends and custom- 
ers both — for the country store in those days was a 
more important factor in the business community 
than it is in these. Right and left he shook hands, 
and made a ripple of excitement with his contagious 
laugh. Mrs. Delafield was a woman after Mrs. 
Thompson’s own heart. Between the minister’s wife, 
who, with her calm yellow eyes, looked into motives 
and weighed acts, and Mrs. Delafield, whose pride 
always kept her on a lofty level of endeavor and 
sentiment, there was a bond of which Dorothy was 
the connecting link. Mrs. Thompson had very 
much the same notions of Dorothy’s possibilites that 
her mother possessed, and she looked over the 
young girl now with an expression of complacent sat- 
isfaction. Placing her chubby arm around Doro- 
thy, she said, 

“ Dorothy, you are my girl, too.” 

Dorothy did look sweet and daughterly, as she 
nestled against Mrs. Thompson and smiled into the 
rather inflexible countenance with her expansive gen- 
erous smile. Her dark-blue merino dress, made 
with the baby waist ” of those days, emphasized 
her slenderness and roundness. The mass of wavy 
golden-brown hair, drawn back from her forehead 
and falling in two long braids to her waist, made a 
halo from ear to ear round the pink and white face, 
in which the color came and went, under Mrs. 
Thompson’s eyes. 


84 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Miss Priscilla Morton now drew near with the an- 
nouncement that the supper was spread, and the 
first table could go in. She loved Dorothy, too, and 
bending over and kissing the youpg girl, she said, 
with much naturalness and sweetness, 

“ Have you found the Lord yet, Dorothy?^’ 
Dorothy was accustomed to such questions as 
this from the time she could first remember; but to- 
night, coming from Miss Priscilla, it almost took 
her breath away. Did Miss Priscilla have any idea 
of what was going on in her mind? Did it show in 
her face ? She looked up with a little gasp, and the 
tears came as she said, hesitatingly, but with her 
literal, native honesty, 

“ I am afraid I haven’t.” 

Miss Priscilla looked very grave and solicitous as 
she took Dorothy’s hand and said, 

“ Do not delay remembering your Creator in the 
days of your youth.” 

Dorothy flushed and looked up to Mrs. Thomp^ 
son, who said, with her deepest gravity, 

“ I pray specially for you every night, my child ; 
the Lord grant an answer to my prayers.” 

Amen !” said Mrs. Delafield, so impressively 
that Dorothy hung her head an instant to conceal 
the tears that threatened to overflow. “ What a 
dreadful — what a wicked sinner I am ! ” was her 
mental exclamation. All that evening, if she tried 
to enter into the games, or to laugh and be merry, 
these questions came back to her. And so it all 
ended in her sitting very quietly by her mother most 
of the time. 

Miss Priscilla took the opportunity to say to Mr. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


85 

Thompson that she thought Dorothy was seriously 
inclined, and that they must offer her constantly 
before the throne, for she was impressed the Lord 
had a mission for Dorothy to accomplish. 

The folding-doors are thrown open. There is a 
momentary, an awful silence. For a minute the 
array of spotless linen and piles of palatable food 
had much the same effect as that which lurks in 
.many Christian minds when they contemplate the 
marriage supper of the Lamb. It seemed as if the 
sill separating the two rooms was as impassable by 
ordinary volition as the gulf of death, and quite as 
terrible. 

It was Mrs. Thompson’s voice that broke the 
silence. 

“ Friends, don’t be afraid, there will have to be a 
first table. Some one go/’ 

Thus urged and cheered, eight or ten actually 
started, but with a lugubrious, uncertain expression, 
and a manner which implied, “ I am not in the least 
hungry — I would not be guilty of being hungry.” 

“ Come, come,” said Miss Priscilla, touching the 
arm of a lately married lady, “ your new honors will 
allow you to sit at the first table, I am sure.” 

Then suddenly there was something like a stam- 
pede ; it was like the bursting of a dam. The room 
which had been so full, with one plunge seemed to 
empty itself into the other. An embarrassed hem- 
ming and faint, forced coughing followed. 

Now it was that Mrs. Thompson’s talent shone. 
She seated first one family and then another, until 
there were four compact rows of black coats and 
black alpacas as neatly stowed away as the layers 


86 


Dorothy Delafield. 


in a sedimentary deposit. Then she laughed, and 
Miss Priscilla laughed, and Mrs. Delafield looked 
amused out of her large, pathetic eyes, as Mrs. 
Thompson facetiously told the overflow to walk back 
into the parlor, and wait until their betters were 
served; but that they would find the last were as 
well served, for good things were simply raining in- 
to the kitchen. In the general distraction which 
followed, Mr. Delafield came up to his wife, who was 
seated in a row with Mrs. Thompson and Miss 
Priscilla on the hair-cloth sofa. 

“ Wife,” he said, gently, finding it difficult to gain 
her attention. 

Mrs. Delafield looked up ; so did the other ladies. 
He laid the three forefingers of his right hand on 
his cheek. 

“ When ? ” asked Mrs. Delafield. 

In a half-hour ; make some excuse for me.” 

“Any risk?” asked Mrs. Thompson, in her even, 
changeless tone. 

“ I think there is, and I must start two hours 
earlier than I had intended.” 

Dorothy had been sitting on a little cricket beside 
her mother. Then, her father was to be exposed to 
danger. What was it ? Where was he going ? 
Presently she slipped away and soon after issued 
out of a side door. How cold it was ; how dark. 
The sky was muffled in a thick, snowy gray cloud, 
there was not a breath of wind in the trees, only 
that even, damp, penetrating cold. But Dorothy 
was not a girl to be afraid. Should her father go 
into danger and his Dorothy not be by his side ? She 
crept around the house to a little side path that led 


Dorothy Delafield. 


87 


to the front gate ; crouching down behind the thick 
low-lying branches of a hemlock, she waited. It 
seemed a long while, but at length the front door 
opened, and she saw her father appear alone, and 
glance around anxiously. But the streets seemed 
absolutely deserted. As if assured, Mr. Delafield 
drew his slight frame erect, and leaving the yard 
noiselessly, went down the street. Dorothy waited 
till his footsteps died away, then she bounded to 
her feet, and like a shadow ran noiselessly over the 
frozen ground. 

“ Papa, dear papa,” she said, breathlessly, “ let 
me go with you.” 

“Dorothy, Dorothy, what is this?” and her 
father, annoyed for the moment, seized her arm 
tightly. 

“ Only that I am going with you, if there is any 
danger.” 

“ Pshaw ! I did not say there was danger.” 

Mr. Delafield seemed to have a sudden thought. 
He looked at Dorothy a second, then without 
another word, he took her mittened hand in his and 
walked on. 

Dorothy’s heart bounded. ' Where were they 
going? at last something like her romantic dreams 
was about to happen. Her nerves jumped with the 
thrill. Down the steep street they hurried ; then 
they turned a sharp corner, almost on a run ; at last 
they directed their faces toward the school green. 
When they were in the midst of the grove Mr. 
Delafield paused and listened. 

In the faint light he saw the still fainter outline 
of a large covered wagon. Relinquishing his tight 


88 


Dorothy Delafield. 


hold on Dorothy’s hand, he patted the horses 
and quieted them as they began to whinny. 
There was no one in the wagon, and there was but 
one seat in the front. But, as if to make himself 
doubly sure, he climbed in at the front and out of 
the back, and saying to Dorothy, “ It is all right, let 
us hurry,” they went on ; not down the green road, 
but diagonally across it, in the direction of Dr. 
Withers’s. 

But what a queer way of getting in ; for Mr. 
Delafield applied a key to a small, low door in the 
upper story of the house, which, on this side, was 
the first, as the house was built against a bank in 
which the green terminated. He went in and drew 
Dorothy after him. They were in a little square 
closet. There was a bell rope which he just 
touched. Presently a light appeared under the 
crack of the door, and the next instant Dr. Withers 
opened it, holding a flaming candle, and exposing 
his face, on which a wise but high determination 
sat. 

‘‘You got here without molestation then.” The 
next minute, seeing Dorothy, he drew back in dis- 
may ; “ Dorothy here ? ” 

“Yes; she followed me, and now she must take 
the consequences.” 

“ Humph ! ” and Dr. Withers’s glasses, in the 
candle-light, glared at Dorothy like two balls of 
fire. 

“ Dorothy, I thought you had more sense.” 

“ I propose to take Dorothy with me, doctor ; no 
harm could result to her.” 

Dr. Withers’s glasses now fell off. Dorothy 


Dorothy Delafield. 


89 


stooped to pick them up as with their shoe-string 
they described a circle on the floor. 

“ Take her with you ! ” 

Yes ; with a woman on the front seat, any one 
would be slow to think I carried such a cargo.” 

Dr. Withers ran his fingers through his straggling 
and short gray locks. He screened his eyes as he 
glanced at Dorothy again. Then his rather caustic 
lips met each other, and he ejaculated, “ That’s so.” 

“ Dorothy,” he said, “ Dorothy, my girl, what 
happens to-night must never pass your lips till the 
glad day comes, and come it will, when that cursed, 
that pe-culiar ” — and Dr. Withers hissed the last word 
out — “ institution, called slavery, ceases to exist. 
There are three of those forlorn wretches down 
stairs, scarred, ugly, debased into such abject fear, 
that I loathe anew the vile traffic that made them 
such. Now, your father is to take them across the 
country to the next station, and no one is to know 
of this ride ; this is the under-ground railway,” and 
Dr. Withers quietly chuckled. 

Dorothy seized the doctor’s hand in both her 
own. 

“ Ah, Dr. Withers, I feel so proud to go, to help.” 

In reply, the doctor put his finger on his lips and 
looked at Dorothy questioningly. 

She shook her head affirmatively, and then they 
descended to that familiar room which was office, 
living-room, school-room, and now, holy refuge, in 
one. The red door was opened, and then, by dint 
of much coaxing and many assurances, Dr. Withers 
prevailed upon the slaves to come out. 

Poor, timid, frightened souls ! Discovery seemed 


90 


Dorothy Delafield. 


lurking in every footstep they heard. Traitorous 
promises seemed hiding behind every friendly word. 
Seeing Dorothy, they supposed that she had been 
brought to witness their capture, and down they 
fell on their knees, and cried, 

“ Let us go, massa ; O, for the good Lor’s sake, 
let us go ! ” 

Get up, get up,” said Dr. Withers, command- 
ingly. “ These are friends, and this girl ” — and now 
the doctor put his hand on Dorothy’s head with 
something of the grace of a benediction touch — 
“ this girl has the blood of Northerners in her veins, 
and such courage and love of liberty that she is go- 
ing with you till you are in a place of safety.” 

They fell down prone at Dorothy’s feet. They 
kissed those feet. They took hold of her dress and 
clung to it and blessed her ; and all Dorothy could 
think of was that weary, repenting Magdalen, and 
she felt such a consecration of blessed, helpful 
womanhood as she had never felt before. 

Then the plan was explained. Mr. Delafield was 
to drive. The three men were to lie in the bottom 
of the conveyance, in the rough bed laid there, and 
Dorothy, unless her father called her to the front 
beside him, was to sit in the back and watch for 
pursuers. 

The Fugitive Slave Law had been broken so 
many times by Dr. Withers and his tried band of 
associates, that not much danger was apprehended. 
Still this early start was because of a suspicious 
innuendo Dr. Withers had heard Jonas Wheeler 
drop. The usual hour for such expeditions from 
Quincy was midnight, and though it was only ten 


Dorothy Delafield. 91 

o’clock, the doctor and Mr. Delafield felt that no 
time was to be wasted. 

The band of six ascended the staircase, and 
crept out one by one through the low door, over 
which the shade of the chestnuts extended, Mr. 
Delafield silently leading the way. The horses had 
evidently been unmolested ; Dorothy was safely 
stowed away in a corner behind, the black curtain 
having a hole in it just large enough for her to 
watch. The three slaves were placed on their 
backs, side by side, and covered so as to present an 
even surface. Then, with a few whispered parting 
injunctions. Dr. Withers put the reins in Mr. Dela- 
field’s hands, and the party passed out from the 
grove to the street, while the old man retraced his 
steps to his lonely home. 

Dorothy held her breath as the wheels rattled 
over the stony, frozen ground. She felt as if a spy 
lurked behind every tree. As for her father, he 
drove at a moderate rate, but even pace, till Quincy 
was well behind them. On they dashed then 
through the short valleys, and up and down the 
steep hills, until six miles lay between them and 
Quincy. Not a word had been spoken, but now, 
Dorothy, in the pale, ghastly glimmer shed over 
the landscape by the moon’s rays, as it alternately 
plowed its way through banks of vaporous gray 
cloud, and anon shown out for a second clear and 
full, discerned from the eminence on which they 
were driving, far away, but clearly defined on 
another eminence the outline of four horsemen. 
They were coming quickly, far more rapidly than 
Mr. Delafield could go with his wagon. 


92 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ Father,” whispered Dorothy, “ father, we are 
followed.” 

“ Good God ! so soon ! how far are they away ? ” 

“A mile and a half.” 

“ Then there is no hope but Murderers’ Row. 
Not a word now, no matter what happens.’' 

He touched the horses with the whip and on they 
sped. 

It seemed to Dorothy as if they wakened all the 
echoes in all the numerous hills around. 

They were on a smooth, wide road, following the 
course of the Speedaway, which here broadened out 
into a sullen, shallow black bed. Its nearest bank 
was fringed by a meadow, while its farther one was 
clothed in a dense growth of cedars, oaks, chest- 
nuts, and underbrush. 

Mr. Delafield’s eyes followed the line of trees 
anxiously. 

He stopped the horses. Were they overtaken? 
Dorothy wondered, and her heart stood still ; but, 
no, her father got out and let down some bars. 

“ Drive through, Dorothy,” he said, in a firm, 
tense voice ; drive straight to the river.” 

She had sprung to the seat and seized the reins 
as he had descended, and now, although every 
nerve seemed dancing, there was a splendid glow 
in her eyes as she urged the horses across the 
meadow. 

Mr. Delafield replaced the bars, looked to see 
that the wheels had left no traces, and then over- 
taking the vehicle, he sprang to his seat, and 
plunged the horses into the water. It was deeper 
than usual, it came up to the box of the wagon ooz- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


93 


ing in at the cracks. But the fugitives never stirred, 
except to lift their heads. They reached the oppo- 
site bank, and under the thickly overhanging 
branches of the cedars the horses passed into a 
wood road, evidently long unused, as there was 
little to mark its existence save the thinning out of 
the larger trees. 

“Are we safe, father ? ” asked Dorothy, after they 
were well started on this rough, dark road. 

“ No ; this road is no secret, and will only save 
time. They will go on three or four miles, perhaps, 
before they suspect this, but that will give us time 
to get to Murderers’ Row, if they set no spies on us 
meanwhile. Ah, here we are ! ” and he sprang 
from his seat and lifted Dorothy down. 

The three men followed dripping and shivering. 

“ Now, stand still,” Mr. Delafield explained, 
“ while I go a rod farther on, and lead the horses 
and wagon through an opening I know of.” 

The time seemed endless to Dorothy, left alone in 
that deep wood with her three companions. Fear 
of them was out of the question, for consuming 
fright had taken possession of them. They were 
well-nigh exhausted when they started on this cold 
November night. Days of flight and exposure and 
terror had left little nervous force. An abject, hope- 
less, cringing attitude made Dorothy almost wonder 
if they were human beings. 

At last her father returned. 

“ There, the horses and wagon are safe from easy 
discovery. Now come.” 

To Dorothy’s surprise and consternation they 
struck into the woods, but in the direction of the 


94 


Dorothy Delafield. 


river. They reached the brink just as the sharp, 
ringing sound of hoofs broke the stillness. But no 
eye could have discovered them through those thick 
branches, whose companions swept the very water. 

On the horsemen sped. 

Dorothy seized her father’s arm as she recognized 
Mr. Joshua Maxim. 

“ There is that rascal, Jonas Wheeler ! ” 

“Who are the other two, father?” whispered 
Dorothy. 

“ Bosses — tools,” was the only reply, as the 
sound of the horses’ hoofs died away. 

Mr. Delafield again started forward. “ We must 
ford the river,” he explained ; and then, forming a 
chair with his hands and those of the largest of the 
three men, made Dorothy take it. In five minutes 
they were all in the open meadow. 

“ Now we must run ; ” and without another word, 
Robert Delafield set the example. 

He crawled under the bars like a cat, the rest fol- 
lowing, and as they hurried across the road, some 
conformation of the land brought back with distinct- 
ness the retreating footsteps of the horses. 

“Good!” exclaimed Mr. Delafield, under his 
breath, as he leaped the low fence on the opposite 
side. 

How Dorothy followed she never knew ; her 
dress apparently was no impediment. 

They were at the base of a gentle slope that had 
been covered with grain. The sharp stubble was 
not easy to pass through, but they ran on in the 
frosty air, on to the other side and gradually up 
hill. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


95 


Suddenly the moon came out, round and brilliant, 
and revealed to Dorothy’s startled gaze, on the 
crest of the hill they were ascending, three graves 
in a row. 

“ Father ! ” she exclaimed. 

“ Murderers’ Row ! ” was his reply. 

Dorothy knew it by reputation. 

A solitary, ill-omened, unconsecrated spot where 
ghosts were said to walk. Here was buried the man 
whose name was the talisman of fear to all the 
Quincy children, Zutphen, who had murdered a 
man for his gold ; here were, also, Nancy Barton 
and her husband, Nancy having killed her husband, 
and committed suicide. 

The simple-minded farmers far and wide shunned 
the spot, and thus it was that the final resting-place 
of criminals became the refuge of the oppressed. 

“ Now, lie low, and crawl.” 

They reached the crest. A level, grassy place 
in summer to all appearances; in winter, had it been 
visited for purposes of discovery, a man like Victor 
Hugo’s Jarut, would have detected a hollow sound 
between the sides of two of the graves, and would 
have discovered a trap-door, covered with sod, which 
concealed rough steps. 

Mr. Delafield opened this after some difficulty. 

He made the men go down into what doubtless 
seemed to them the valley of the shadow of death ; 
Dorothy followed, and then her father, coming after, 
closed the door and shut them up apparently in a 
living tomb. 

But a second after he struck a match, in its flash 
seized a candle which the place contained, and 


Dorothy Delafield. 


96 

when it was lighted; his companions beheld a square 
room hollowed out of the earth, and bricked secure- 
ly. It opened into a similar apartment, which 
terminated in a long, vaulted passage, high enough 
for a man to stand in. 

Mr. Delafield opened a large box and displayed 
dry clothes to the astonished blacks. He produced 
a flask of brandy and some simple food. He gave 
them each an outfit. Going into the adjoining 
room, they discovered a rough bed, and their grati- 
tude knew no bounds. 

“ You are to remain here till called for,” said Mr. 
Delafield. “ You are perfectly secure, and not later 
than to-morrow night, perhaps before, friends will 
enter and carry you to the station whither I hoped 
to have the good luck to conduct you. But I have 
done the best I could and all I can, and here my 
duty ends.” 

He committed them with impressive solemnity, 
in a short prayer, to the guidance of God, and then, 
lighting another candle, he took Dorothy’s hand and 
disappeared with her down the long, narrow passage. 

They went on and down a few rods, and then up, 
a cool air blowing in on them in gusts and threatening 
the candle. 

“ Here we are, on the side of an exhausted sand- 
bank. Now, daughter, can you crawl through a 
hole?” 

Dorothy felt equal to any thing, and soon 
emerged near the edge of a spur of woods. 

“ Now, Dorothy,” he said, “ the blacks and the 
horses and wagon will be attended to by other 
hands than mine.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


97 


“ Whose wagon is it, father? 

Nobody’s in Quincy. There are no such horses 
in Quincy, except Mr. Maxim’s, and his horses 
would never be loaned to this just cause. But 
the toughest problem of all is before you, Doro- 
thy, a ten miles’ walk through the woods, and 
along the side of the Quincy mountain; can you 
do it?” 

“Yes,” said Dorothy, gleefully, “ I can,” and she 
seized her father’s hand. 

They started although the clouds had settled into 
a thick, impenetrable covering. 

But Dorothy trusted her father, and he believed 
in her strength and energy. 

It grew warmer ; after awhile the snow began to 
fall. On they walked. Two o’clock in the morning 
came, and the snow became so deep that Dorothy’s 
feet were a burden to her to lift. Should she com- 
plain ? Never ! 

With her hand grasped in that firm, fatherly 
grasp, they reached their own spur of the mountain, 
their shoes torn, their muscles stiff, just as the mill- 
bell struck four. 

The Wheelers, the Stillwells, the Prouts, and 
the wife and children of Mr. Maxim were all buried 
in slumber as Dorothy and her father came into the 
deserted streets. 

But Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, Miss Priscilla Mor- 
ton, Dr. Withers, and Mrs. Delafield were keeping 
watch for the wanderers in Dorothy’s home. They 
all kissed her when they saw how pale the rosy face 
had grown, and Dr. Withers, although he would 
have had it otherwise, had not the heart to with- 
7 


98 Dorothy Delafield. 

draw, when Miss Priscilla, holding Dorothy close to 
her side, said, 

“ Let us thank the Lord in a short prayer for his 
manifold blessings.” 

Then that little company of abolitionists sepa- 
rated ; and when Quincy eyes blinked at six, and 
Quincy gossips began to stir, they knew not that a 
round egg of a secret had been hatched in their own 
nest, and they none the wiser. 

As for Jonas Wheeler, Mr. Maxim, and their 
companions, they were wise enough to keep that 
night’s ride a secret. 



Dorothy Delafield. 


99 


^HAPIPEF^ UIII. 

A FEW days after the events recorded in the last 
chapter Dorothy sat in her chair by the 
window in Dr. Withers’s office. The doctor sat 
tilted against the wall in deep contemplation. To 
Dorothy he appeared venerable in the extreme. 
There was something in him which seemed to be- 
speak battles with disembodied forces, and just 
now, when her mind dwelt continuously on the 
world, the flesh, and the devil, it was a comfort 
to her to examine Dr. Withers’s appearance. 

That stump of an arm enabled Dorothy to enter 
mentally upon a spiritual campaign in which she 
asked herself whether she really could cut off a 
member if it offended, if she really could extinguish 
her eyes if they deliberately sought wicked sights. 
With a long, weary sigh she at length made up her 
mind that she would be willing to dispose of her- 
self, member by member, for perfect peace of mind. 

“ What are you thinking about, Dorothy?” asked 
the doctor, his keen, light-blue eyes cutting into the 
marrow of her consciousness as he brought himself 
and his chair back to an upright position. 

Dorothy looked up and sighed again, a patient, 
most discouraged sigh. 

‘‘ Dr. Withers, it is hard to believe ! ” 

He continued looking at her, and as he did so 
thrusting into view his wooden leg. It came down 
with a hard thump as he said, 


100 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ You have discovered that fact early.” 

“ Were you ever converted, Dr. Withers ? ” 

“Dozens of times.” 

There was a humorous light in his eyes which 
made Dorothy relax from her intense gravity. 

“ I do not mean in the Latin sense of the word, 
doctor, but — but — ” 

“ The Methodist sense, I suppose.” 

“ Why, no ; the Bible sense ; it is the Bible sense, 
of course.” 

“ Well, Dorothy, what is the difference between 
the Latin and the Bible sense?” 

“ O ” — and Dorothy’s face lighted with a wistful, 
half-expectant expression — “ in the Latin it is sim- 
ply turning away from one thing toward another ; 
but in the Bible it is the turning, and the having 
a great light shine in on your soul, and after it 
comes just bathing in it.” 

Dorothy’s two hands were uplifted as if she were 
swimming in a sea of glory. 

“ Are you sure that that is the Bible meaning, 
Dorothy ? ” 

“ O, yes ; at least so many have testified to 
such an experience. But, Dr. Withers ” — Dorothy’s 
voice sank till she almost whispered — “ I can’t un- 
derstand why, when I have prayed for weeks for an 
evidence it doesn’t come. I am afraid I have com- 
mitted the unpardonable sin.” 

“What is the unpardonable sin?” 

“ Nobody knows. So, perhaps, I have stumbled 
into it. If I only could have known ! I have done 
every thing that Mr. Thompson advises. I have 
prayed hours ; I have tried to exercise faith ; I have 


Dorothy Delafield. ioi 

accepted every thing in the creed, and I think I 
have surrendered all I have, and all I am. I have 
told the Lord I would be a missionary, any thing, 
if he would only send me a witness, and none comes» 
There is one thing that, perhaps, keeps me out of 
the kingdom. I do not love the Lord with all my 
heart and my neighbor as myself. When I meet 
one of the men coming up from the mill, all black 
and sweating, and I ask myself if I love him, I have 
to say ‘ I don’t,’ and I don’t ! ” 

Dorothy emphasized the last denial with a look 
of dismay, and disgust spread over her countenance. 

Dr. Withers was in a dilemma.- He had not 
looked into the Bible for years, but so far as the 
doctrines of the various churches were concerned, 
he had studied them for years and then deliberately 
set them aside as extraordinary codes of conduct, 
but codes according to which no one lived literally. 
He had gone all through Dorothy’s state of mind, 
and he was curious to see how she would come out 
of it. He hoped she would work herself into a 
happy delusion, and then gradually forget all about 
it. But he felt very sorry for her and very tender 
over her, as he asked, with a conkiousness of desire 
for her childish affection, 

“ Dorothy, do you lov6 me ? ” 

“Yes,” said Dorothy, with such deep satisfaction 
that the doctor’s eyes filled unexpectedly. 

“ I am an infidel, Dorothy, let alone a vegetarian, 
and an abolitionist, and a prohibitionist, and I have 
lost an arm and a leg, and I am queer.” 

“ But I love you,” said Dorothy, emphatically. 
“ I don’t like you being an infidel, or a vegetarian, 


102 


Dorothy Delafield. 


but I like all the rest, and I love you. O ! I love 
you because you are so queer.” 

“ Do you love me as much as you do your- 
self?” 

“ Yes, but then,” said Dorothy, with sudden in- 
genuous doubt, “ there is so little in me to love. I 
am afraid the Lord will not have any thing to do 
with me ; so, doctor, it is not saying much when I 
say I love you as much as I love myself.” 

“ I am satisfied.” 

Dorothy looked into his eyes with great earnest- 
ness as she replied, 

“ O, if the Lord would only be satisfied with me, 
just for one hour, a minute, just long enough for 
me to know.” 

“ Dorothy, I cannot help you. In the first place 
I do not believe in religious convictions or experi- 
ence ; but it does strike me that if I were a person 
of the caliber the Bible says Jesus Christ is, if a 
poor human creature couldn’t love me even when 
she tried, if there was a way to show her how to do 
it, I would teach her that way. Suppose I shed the 
light from my common-sense lantern on the .sub- 
ject for a minute. Now you love me, not because 
I am so queer, but in spite of my being so queer. 
Perhaps when you are a woman and see farther 
down than the sweat and dirt of poor toiling hu- 
manity, you will love these mill men in spite of the 
dirt and sweat. And, perhaps, you do not see Jesus 
Christ aright, perhaps you do not understand him. 
He is the only perfect picture of a man in litera- 
ture,” said Dr. Withers, musingly. 

“ Then why, why,” rang out Dorothy’s voice. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


103 

do I not love the Lord, when there is nothing to 
object to in him ! ” 

The corners of the doctor’s mouth puckered as 
he replied, 

“ I dare say that’s just the trouble with Him, 
with you, as well as others. If there is any thing 
I hate, Dorothy, it is a howling, backsliding, con- 
tinually reconstructed Christian. The noise, the 
screaming prayers, the wonderful experiences they 
relate, why I simply do not believe them. But, 
child, I will give you a bit of pure Methodist ad- 
vice. Keep on praying, and if there be such a 
thing as what you call a witness, I believe you will 
have it.” 

“ O, doctor, I am tired out, and I have almost 
given up hoping.” 

For Dorothy’s sake Dr. Withers felt for the time 
like trying to be orthodox. As if the subject had 
grown distasteful, however, he suddenly began to 
make her conjugate her Greek and Latin verbs, 
keeping her busy until the rapidly advancing gloom 
warned him that it was time to send her home. 

He watched the upright figure disappear over the 
bend of the hill, and as he went back into the 
darkness of his dingy office he muttered, 

“ Perverted nervous force, too solitary, too emo- 
tional.” 

As for Dorothy the cold December wind, which 
blew up through the deep hollows in which the 
mills clustered, struck her with an inspiring force. 
Her spirits rose, she almost ran down the long tor- 
tuous street, and when she reached home her face 
was in a glow. 


104 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Dorothy, don’t tell,” and Elizabeth met her at 
the door with a serious face and her little forefinger 
raised ; “ don’t tell ; but I heard mamma say that 
Mrs. Miles would die to-night. Mr. Thompson 
says that the Lord is merciful, but Mrs. Miles has 
never been converted, and he fears her soul will be 
lost.” 

Elizabeth buried her face in Dorothy’s shawl. 

** And O, Dorothy, you and I are not converted.” 

The wind struck the cottage with a loud, de- 
spairing wail. The very floor trembled. 

Across Dorothy’s troubled mind swept the words 
of the hymn, 

“ Plunged in a gulf of dark despair, 

We wretched sinners lay.” 

It floated through her mind on the wave of the 
solemn melody to which it was always sung in the 
Methodist church. She seized Elizabeth’s hand 
and hurried through the dark hall to the cheerful 
sitting-room. Her mother was there, rocking back 
and forth thoughtfully before the fire. Dorothy 
only kissed her, dreading to hear Elizabeth’s tale 
repeated. 

And Mrs. Delafield said, impressively, 

“ Dorothy, poor Mrs. Miles is dying ; it is a solemn 
thing for an unconverted soul to be launched into 
eternity.” 

“ It is, mother,” said Dorothy, and then, “ I hope 
I shall die in the summer, and when there is no 
wind. It is a cold night to die.” 

‘‘ Yes; but that makes no difference to a disem- 
bodied spirit. If Mrs. Miles were only converted, 


Dorothy Delafield, 


105 

her death-bed would be soft ‘ as downy pillows 
are/ ” 

“ Mrs. Miles has been a good woman, mother.” 

“Yes; she has been a faithful wife and mother; 
but morality, Dorothy, wont save any body.” 

“ I suppose not,” and Dorothy suppressed a sigh 
that threatened to suffocate her. “ Mother, it is 
hard to live.” 

Mrs. Delafield looked up from under her straight 
brows. 

“ Life was meant to be a discipline, Dorothy. 
It is a battle-ground. We are placed here, not for 
enjoyment, but to prepare for a higher life. My dear, 
I hope you will not forget Miss Priscilla’s injunction, 
* Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.’ ” 

“ Mamma,” said Dorothy, with sweet and grave 
gentleness, “ 1 think of Him every hour of the day; 
I fear He thinks me too unworthy to be remem- 
bered by his love.” 

Dorothy was now busy in readjusting the table, 
for her eye was fastidious, and Betty was incapable 
of appreciating straight lines. 

“ I must get papa’s slippers ; he can toast his feet 
the few minutes he has before he goes back to the 
store.” 

Mr. Delafield now came in, and Dorothy, with 
loving assiduity, assisted him in removing his over- 
coat. Then she clung to him as she drew him to 
his chair, and then she stooped and insisted on 
drawing off his boots, and replacing them with the 
warm slippers. 

He stroked her sunny hair, and as she rose kissed 
her, saying. 


io6 Dorothy Delafield. 

“You are a good daughter, Dorothy.” 

Her eyes suddenly grew dim, and she thought, 

“ O, if I could hear the Lord say you are a good 
daughter, Dorothy.” 

After tea Mrs. Delafield put on her bonnet and 
cloak, preparatory to running over to Mrs. Miles’s. 
Dorothy, left alone, sat down to study. But she 
could not apply her thoughts. Where would Mrs. 
Miles be to-morrow night at this time? Where 
were all the millions upon millions of souls that had 
gone away so quietly and into such utter stillness ? 
Were they floating in the air all around her, as some 
people thought ? Was that very room full of them ? 
Were there good and bad spirits close beside her? 
Was her guardian angel there ? Dorothy wished 
that a being with great, long, drooping white wings, 
such as she had seen in pictures, would audibly 
rustle beside her, unfold those snowy wings, and 
fold her in a soft, warm, feathery embrace. Dor- 
othy’s head sank on one side, her eyes dilated ; she 
thought, “ Perhaps I shall see that angel now, here — 
why not?” — and she had a sense of floating away 
and away among the stars and the deep blue of the 
firmament held forever in that watchful, unchange- 
ful, clasping love. 

Then she thought that this was a good hour to 
intercede for herself once more. Betty was out ; 
her father would not be home till ten o’clock, and 
Elizabeth and Joe were sound asleep. She was, 
therefore, quite alone, unless those miserable spirits 
were beside her. She thought, “ I will arise and 
go unto my Father.” Ah, P'ather, where was he? 
the great, the strong, the unchanging, the eternally 


Dorothy Delafield. 


107 


loving, the supremely tender, the ineffable One, 
who could gather up all these tangled threads of 
longing affection, capacity, blind seeking. She sank 
upon her knees. 

“ Father, dear Father,” said Dorothy, in trem- 
bling accents, “ I am afraid you do not want me; but 
O, how I long for you. Come to me ; forgive me ; 
recognize little Dorothy. It is a cold night, dear 
Lord, and my heart is cold for love. Warm it ; 
shine upon me in thy majestic radiance ; let me see 
thy face a moment, a second. O satisfy me, and 
let me arise in thy likeness. O send a witness to 
me, let me hear thy voice, let such a light shine 
in my soul that it shall be consumed with love, 
dear, dear Lord. Dorothy, the very Dorothy you 
bought with your very own blood, is w^aiting.” 

And then the child paused ; she held her mind, her 
very being, in suspense, her ears alert for a sound, 
and her soul expectant of something undefined, but 
irresistible. 

The clock on the mantel seemed to tick louder 
and louder ; a piece of coal in the stove cracked ; 
the wind moaned and sighed around the house, and 
Dorothy still waited. 

But no visible angel entered the room. No 
heavenly sounds mingled with the earthly. No 
eternal Fatherhood made her cry out, with conscious 
recognition, “Abba, Father.” 

So finally Dorothy rose to her feet irresolutely ; 
she looked around the little room as if awaking 
from a dream ; she sat down, with patient disap- 
pointment, in the small rocker her mother had va- 
cated, and rocked back and forth a long time. 


io8 Dorothy DelafIeld. 

Something of her mother’s passion gradually spread 
over her face ; there was no mistaking the look of 
cloudy anger that straightened out the brows and 
contracted the lips. Dorothy’s heart suddenly 
cried out, 

“It is unjust! it is cruel! I wont pray any 
more ! There is no God, there is only a devil. 
I will grow to be great, and I will be wicked, and 
then I shall die, and where shall I go?” 

With our modern ways of thinking, the fear of 
hell and of hellish wickedness have become themes 
for the vulgar and methods of appeal to the vulgar. 
Well, I am afraid, then, that Dorothy was very vul- 
gar, for a great fear took possession of her. She 
had always dreaded physical pain, and mental un- 
rest was distasteful, and this possibility, even a dim 
one, of everlasting agony was unbearable. 

She prayed again, sitting there in her chair, and 
now her prayer was, “ Save me ! save me ! ” 

She rocked and pleaded, and the tears rained 
down her face, and the wind blew so constantly and 
violently that the house rocked on its foundations. 
But not a sign came to Dorothy’s soul. Then she 
arose, her hands dropped to her sides, she clenched 
them, her proud head was thrown backward, and 
she said, brokenly, 

“I must be one of the lost; I am damned; 

I cannot hope ; I cannot pray any more ; I can do 
nothing else.” 

She stood there like a statue, in deep thought, 
while a perfectly hopeless expression subdued her 
features till they bore something of the look of 
extreme age. 


Dorothy Delafield. 109 

She roused herself again, and reaching after her 
Greek, in a blind kind of way, drew a straight-backed 
chair up to the table and began to study. The 
effort, and her will, which would be either an abso- 
lute curse or an absolute blessing to her, gradually 
mastered her physical prostration, and. when ten 
o’clock came, no one to have looked at Dorothy 
could have suspected the struggle of an hour before. 
The profound sadness which subdued her features 
refined them. 

An observer, doubtless, would have said, 

“ The child is carrying too heavily the poverty 
and cares incident to her station in life.” 

She was so absorbed that she did not hear her 
mother enter. Mrs. Delafield approached Dorothy, 
and looking over her shoulder, saw that it was Greek 
in which her daughter was buried. She could have 
wished, under all the circumstances, that it had 
been the Bible. 

“ Dorothy, Mrs. Miles is dead.” 

Her voice, always musical, and affecting loving 
Dorothy as music sometimes did, was modulated to 
a tone of the utmost impressiveness. 

Dorothy looked up. Her face was utterly grave 
and sad. 

Mrs. Delafield felt that the opportunity must not 
be wasted. 

Dorothy, why will you delay the important 
matter of your soul’s salvation ? ” 

“ Mother,” said Dorothy, and all the affection of 
her nature seemed concentrated in that word, “ I 
have committed the unpardonable sin.” 

Mrs. Delafield started back. 


no 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ What do you mean?” 

“ I have committed the unpardonable sin,” she 
repeated, quietly. “ The Lord will not accept me.” 

“ What have you been doing ? ” said Mrs. Dela- 
field, whose sense of pitfalls and human weakness 
led her never for an instant to relax her vigilance 
over her children. And filled now with a horrible 
fear lest Dorothy had fallen upon some great 
temptation, exclaimed, “ Have you disgraced your 
parents, Dorothy ? ” 

“ No,” said Dorothy, with grave literalness. “ I 
have never done any thing I have not confessed to 
you, but in some way I must have stumbled into 
that sin, for the Lord will not accept me.” 

“ O ! ” said Mrs. Delafield, with extreme relief, 
and much to Dorothy’s wonder, whose mind was in 
such a condition, that she felt outward disguise of 
any description trivial compared with this sense of 
spiritual ostracism. 

“Poor Mrs. Miles!” exclaimed Mrs. Delafield, 
who had quietly concluded that she saw signs of 
what she considered a healthy condition of mental 
ferment in Dorothy. 

“ Did she die peacefully, mother? ” 

“ She just slept herself away,” said Mrs. Delafield, 
but with a deprecatory expression that spoke volumes. 

“Was she afraid to die, mother?” 

Mrs. Delafield slowly nodded her head back and 
forth. 

“ She was too weak to think ; she had the op- 
portunity for thought in her well days, and she 
neglected it. All we can hope is that she was 
quietly seeking the Lord before her sickness.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Ill 


Mother,” said Dorothy, with beseeching, sudden 
eagerness, “ if a soul did go into eternity while it was 
sincerely seeking, do you think it would be lost?” 

“ No,” said Mrs. Delafield. 

“ O, mother ! ” cried Dorothy, and her face be- 
came radiant ; “ then I will seek all my life.” 

Her solemn yet joyful gaze penetrated that 
mother’s heart. She took Dorothy to her bosom 
and kissed her again and again. 

“ Dorothy, the Lord has his own times and sea- 
sons, and in due time he will take you in.” 

That night Dorothy had a dream, and it gave her 
great hope. 

She stood in the center of a large, bare room be- 
fore the Lord, waiting to be judged. He did not 
see her, though she had waited long. One after 
another of her friends passed before him, one by one 
they were told to go into the marriage supper of 
the Lamb. Dorothy watched their glad faces as 
they went in through a great open door. She saw 
beyond it a table spread, and happy faces. Finally 
the little Elizabeth stood there beside her and 
looked into Christ’s countenance. Jesus took her 
in his arms and blessed her ; but, though Dorothy 
pressed closely to his side, he did not look at her, 
and she shrank back humbly, and very much afraid. 
Elizabeth, too, went in ; but as she crossed the portal 
she cast one loving, longing look at Dorothy. Then 
Dorothy was all alone with her Lord, and there 
was a great pause. After utter stillness for several 
moments she looked up in his face with an un- 
speakable dread at her heart. He was smiling on 
her, deep, unutterable affection in his eyes. 


1 12 Dorothy Delafield. 

“ Dorothy,” he said, in a voice that filled her soul 
with most ravishing delight, “ you may enter in.” 

When she awoke in the morning she was not 
afraid. She had the deepest consciousness that 
there was something wanting in her experience, but 
hope was hovering over her, and she waited. The 
weeks glided on, still Dorothy prayed, still she 
hoped. The holidays passed, and the season for 
the protracted meetings arrived. The publicity 
which seemed to attend conversions in the Method- 
ist Episcopal Church had always been repellant to 
her. She was too thorough a Methodist to have 
doubted their efficacy for a moment, but she had 
always believed that she would not be converted in 
that way. She hoped that the Lord would come 
to her when she was alone. But lately she had felt 
that he might come anywhere to her, on the high- 
way, if he would but come, and she knew that if 
she should recognize him there, she could fall down 
joyfully in the streets, glad to press the very hem of 
his garrnent. 

One night, when the ground was covered with 
snow and the moon was riding high in the heavens, 
Mrs. Delafield announced her intention of going to 
church, for the revival meetings had begun. No 
one had said a word to Dorothy concerning religion 
for several weeks, and she accompanied her mother 
without that oppressive sense of her own sinful per- 
sonality which had so often of late pressed upon her 
consciousness. She had given up all violent strug- 
gling, but her daily life, in its self-abnegation, was 
pitiful while beautiful. In those days Joe and Eliza- 
beth rode over all her rights as elder sister. She 


Dorothy Delafield. 113 

was so afraid that lack of patience might be the 
stumbling-block. Another day it was lack of 
daughterly affection, and then she lavished caresses 
on her parents, or watched eagerly for a wish that 
she could fulfill. Dorothy said over and over to 
herself that it was a straight and narrow way, and it 
was with Spartan fortitude that she looked into the 
years, and simply and sadly believed that they 
would be made up of just such trembling apprehen- 
sion. 

But this night the sky was so serene and pure in 
its intense blueness ; the rolling earth, or that part 
of it named Quincy, had all its undulations and 
roughness covered so whitely and in such soft folds ; 
the cedars and firs across the Speedaway lifted their 
tall, pointed tops so spire-like, that to Dorothy’s 
poetic mind it seemed like that time when “ shep- 
herds watched their flocks by night.” 

They were almost the first to enter the church. 
Those were not the days of lecture-rooms and cozy 
chapels, and Dorothy and her mother, therefore, 
walked up the long, side aisle and took their seats. 
The congregation was slow in gathering, and Doro- 
thy sat quietly thinking. The sixteen years of her 
life — what portion of them she could remember — 
passed before her. It seemed a very simple, un- 
eventful life, even to her, and yet how often she 
had fallen below the standard she had set up for 
her conduct. That was the bitterness of sin, say 
imperfection, to Dorothy, desiring one thing which 
seemed altogether desirable because it was pure and 
good, then taking another, not pure and good, and 
finding enjoyment in it. Dr. Withers would have 
8 


Dorothy Delafield. 


114 

called this the worship of the ideal. Dorothy called 
it, crying out after God. She longed prayerfully 
to-night for that mysterious strength which was 
said to be given to the converted to live up to this 
high conception of life and duty. 

And now I have something phenomenal to relate 
concerning Dorothy. She had been sitting in that 
white- walled, square church for a half-hour. Mr. 
Thompson had opened the service with the excess of 
decorum which marked his movements, the congre- 
gation had sung the opening hymn, “ There is a 
fountain filled with blood,” as they had sung it a 
hundred times before. It promised to be a very 
lifeless, heavy meeting. But into Dorothy’s heart 
had come a visitor, not a white-winged one, but a 
messenger that gave her a revelation such as she 
had never known before. She had theorized, she 
had prayed, she had tried to exercise faith ; but here 
she was in a frame of mind which was the embodi- 
ment of a deep and awfully conscious conviction of 
sin. 

She no longer wondered what sin she had com- 
mitted, her very heart was to her a refuge for sin. 
As if she looked at another person, she apprehended 
the difference between seeking right, because it was 
right, and recognizing the only righteousness in the 
world. The sight of her own faultiness was so great 
that she turned away from herself in an agony of 
self-abasement. She cried to be saved from herself. 
She knew all at once that she loved God, loved her 
Saviour, but O, how far away, how unreachable he 
seemed. 

From that instant she lost all real consciousness 


Dorothy Delafield. 


115 

of place and surroundings. When Mr. Thompson 
invited sinners to the altar his calm face was filled 
with genuine surprise to see his favorite, Dorothy, 
come toward it. There was no trembling, blushing 
diffidence in her mien. There was grandeur, self- 
abnegation, in her whole expression. Her face 
looked as though she saw a vision. A solemn still- 
ness fell all at once upon the little audience. 

The Lord is here, let us pray,” said Mr. 
Thompson. 

He offered such a prayer as had never been heard 
from his lips. And, kneeling, Dorothy prayed, but 
in such agony that she hardly knew she prayed. 
Belief had come in a great, surging wave, and affec- 
tion — burning, consuming, reverential affection. 
But, O, how unattainable the divine nearness. 
That was what she agonized for. The congregation 
sang hymn after hymn. Member after member 
prayed. She felt as if her heart would burst with 
excess of longing and uncertainty. 

No comforting assurance came to Dorothy that 
night, and she walked home under the solemn blue 
sky and over the white ground with a strange sense 
of being in another world. Sleep fled from her. All 
that night she remained in that expectant yet 
hopeless state. 

The day found the color gone from the round 
cheeks, the great gray eyes pathetic and hollow. 
Mrs. Delafield moved noiselessly about the house, 
more convinced than ever concerning Dorothy’s 
mission. Night found her again before the church 
altar, and again its small hours drew to a close and 
found Dorothy unblest. Prayer went up for her 


Dorothy Delafield. 


1 16 

from many a home. Miss Priscilla and Mrs. 
Thompson sat and prayed together far into the 
night. Dorothy went around her home so mutely 
sorrowful, and all the time with such a burden on 
her heart, that she felt she must die. The third 
night came and still she prayed, but no comforting 
assurance. But what profound belief was there. 
She knew she could never doubt again. 

Four long and weary days had winged their flight. 
Four long evenings had Dorothy prostrated herself, 
publicly, as a sinner. And, now, on that fourth 
night, before they separated, the little family prayed 
together, and Robert Delafield broke down and 
wept. He could not bear to see Dorothy suffer so: 
a child as nearly perfect to him as a child could be 
and so well beloved. 

But Dorothy kissed her parents good-night, and 
to their earnest inquiry whether the witness had 
come only shook her head negatively, and ascended 
to her chamber. The moonlight bathed the pink 
roses on the wall and the white covering on the 
bed in an excess of pure, white light. Dorothy 
threw herself down on the floor beside that little 
bed, laid her head down and thought : God had 
certainly given her a revelation of sin ; that she 
could not doubt. She loved him. Yes, with all 
her heart, soul, mind, and strength ; this she could 
not doubt. But there was no joy in her heart, no 
sense of love returned. She sighed heavily. Then 
suddenly her heart said, submissively, 

“ Lord, in thine own good time. I can wait.” 

The good time came then. No blind effulgence, 
no intoxicating transport ; but a great, quiet, intense 


Dorothy Delafield. 


117 

peace filled the weary little soul, and then Dorothy 
knew as surely as if she were mature that she had 
had the profoundest experience of her life. That 
night was born the calmness, the restfulness, which 
had made her a living witness, her very presence a 
comfort to many. That night Dorothy’s real life 
began. That night her soul was visited by a con- 
sciousness of a reciprocated affection, that sur- 
rounded her thenceforth as a wall of fire. 



ii8 


Dorothy Delafield. 


©HAPTBr? IX. 

S UNDAY came, and with it Dorothy’s initiation 
into the mysteries of class-meeting. She had 
dreaded the ordeal of •* relating her experience.” 
It was so sweet to think of it, to cherish it in her 
own bosom, to go literally into her closet and pray. 
But she had been enrolled as a member of the Gen- 
eral Class by Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Thompson, of 
course, knew best. 

The General Class met on Sunday afternoon in 
the audience room of the church, and was composed 
mainly of adults — old Christians, who had spoken 
many a year, and who, Dorothy felt, must know 
volumes of Christian living, of which she was still in 
profound ignorance. 

It was a still, sunny, peaceful hour when Doro- 
thy wended her way up the hills to the church to 
give, what Mr. Thompson told her he hoped would 
be, “ a full and glorious testimony of her conversion.” 

She had a heavy feeling at her heart, and her 
hands grew colder and colder the nearer she ap- 
proached the church. As she ascended the steps 
it seemed to her that her tongue was glued to the 
roof of her mouth. She drew a long breath of relief 
as she beheld so many present, fifty at least, 
thought Dorothy. “ I wont speak unless they ask 
me to, and probably they will forget me.” So she 
glided in, and sat down in a pew near the door, and 


Dorothy Delafield. 


119 

began to compose her thoughts and pray that a tes- 
timony should come into her mind. 

Poor Dorothy’s tongue was never really at a loss 
for words, or her mind for ideas, and she was present- 
ly rolling off sentence after sentence in silent thought, 
and sentences that pleased her much rhetorically. 
But how they all fled when the class-leader rose and 
gave out a hymn. 

He was a man who had always frightened Doro- 
thy ; a tall New England man, with the typical 
wiriness and height and sharpness. He stood there 
before the altar-railing, his long, bony hands clasping 
it, his jet-black hair hanging in long locks behind his 
ears, and his small, black eyes piercing and snap- 
ping, nervously glancing from member to member. 
Dorothy thought they looked into her very soul and 
read her dread and melancholy. 

“ Brethring and sistern,” said the leader, in a 
high, ringing voice, “ jine one, jine all, in the opening 
hymn. There’s worship in singen, and in prayen, 
and in testimony.” 

A deep, long-drawn groan from a corner near the 
pulpit led Dorothy to look up and behold Jonas 
Wheeler resting there, his hands clasped together 
upon his breast, his eyes uprolled until only the 
whites were visible. 

“ Thank the Lord ! ” was now ejaculated from 
another quarter. 

“ Ah, I don’t like this ! ” exclaimed Dorothy to her- 
self ; and then a horrified feeling at her audacity and 
flistidiousness led her to fix her thoughts on the 
fact that the service had begun, and that only deep 
reverence was becoming. The hymn closed. A 


120 


Dorothy Delafield. 


prayer was uttered. Then the leader, Mr. Slowly, 
swaying slightly back and forth, looked over the 
pews reflectively, evidently deciding where to begin. 

Dorothy held her breath. What if he should say, 
in that high, clear voice, “ Sister Delafield, let us 
hear from you ? " But no ; he began at the pew 
nearest the altar — it would take a long time, all the 
afternoon, perhaps, to reach her. The next hope 
that held her attention was the length of the remarks 
made by one person and another. She had a wicked, 
guilty feeling over the panic which had seized her. 
Was she too proud to make her confessions before 
the congregation? No ; she did not feel proud, she 
was afraid. And what was there to be afraid of? all 
Methodists did this ! Ah, she did not know ; but the 
fear grew. Then she began to compose a few short 
sentences again, to go over and over them, so as not 
to forget them. 

Brother Inches was speaking now. His voice 
was broken. He was telling of the time he was 
found a drunkard in the streets, of how Christian 
charity had taken him by the hand and helped him ; 
God had converted him, and now, through watching 
and praying, he hoped to be kept from backsliding. 

What was the most dreadful thing she had ever 
done? Dorothy tried to think. The lies of her 
childhood, all her little disobediences, walked in pro- 
cession before her. Should she recount them and say 
she was sorry for them, and would try not to com- 
mit like offenses. Then she smiled, unawares to 
herself. She knew that she had outgrown even the 
temptation. O, what should she say? — all the fine 
speech she had memorized was a perfect blank. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


I2I 


All at once her ears were startled by Brother 
Slowly saying, in solemn, reproving tones, after a 
long pause, in which several members had declined 
to speak: 

“ Brethring and sistern, ef you refuse to git up 
.afore the Lord and recount the wonderful things as 
he has done fer you, because he has not given you 
the tongue of a ready speaker, then, I say, don’t be 
afraid. Rise to your feet and trust in the Lord. 
To wait fer words is a temptation of the devil. Ef 
ye have had an experiunce, ask the Lord, an’ he will 
give you expresshuns.” 

Dorothy felt immensely relieved. This, then, was 
one of those subtle, mysterious attacks of the evil 
one, and she had not recognized it. She would 
think no more ; she would just offer prayer con- 
tinually till her turn came, then she would rise and 
her faith would be blest. 

Mr. Slowly’s invitations drew nearer and nearer. 
Never mind ! Her back was planted firmly against 
the pew ; her little face had a hard, strained look. 
She knew now what her duty was, and she would 
do it. 

Now they were rising in the very pew in which 
she was sitting. Soon she would hear her name ; 
there it was, the very words, 

“ Sister Delafield, let us hear from you.” 

Dorothy’s heart gave a great, suffocating bound. 
She felt cold all over, but she rose slowly ; her color 
was all gone ; the large, gray eyes had a tearful, 
frightened look. Her position was emphasized 
when a brother prayerfully ejaculated, 

“ The Lord bless the lambs of the flock ! ” 


122 


Dorothy Delafield. 


An “ Amen ” resounded from all parts of the 
house, and then Dorothy stood motionless, speech- 
less. Where was the testimony that was to be 
given? Not a word came to her ; but, instead, she 
seemed to see the very evil one himself lurking in 
the corner behind Jonas Wheeler, glinting at her 
with small black eyes, strangely like Mr. Slowly’s. 

“ The Lord help her ! ” “O God, help!” “Jesus, 
send down the fire ! ” was murmured from mouth 
to mouth. 

Still Dorothy stood; and she prayed. Stillness 
brooded in the room. Every body was expectant, 
Dorothy most of all. 

But a deep silence settled down more and more 
deeply in her soul. She was like Simeon in the 
temple. But the fear gradually fled, and at length, 
in her pale muteness, she sank into her seat again. 

Those who had looked into the pure, expectant 
face, were strangely moved. That silent, brave 
stand was worth a thousand speeches. 

Dorothy’s duty was fulfilled more roundly than 
she knew. For some reason, after the necessary 
handshakings were over — and there was many an 
old, weather-beaten face that looked kindly and en- 
couragingly into hers — she left the church in a 
much quieter and happier frame of mind than she 
had entered it. How lovely and clearly blue the 
hills looked in the Sabbath stillness. There was a 
tender warmth about the early spring sky which 
whispered of the fervent effulgence coming in the 
footsteps of summer. How long life was. Springs 
and summers would come and go. She would live 
on and on. “ Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


123 


sang Dorothy, softly, as she walked down the suc- 
cession of hills that led to her home. And then a 
peculiar sense of newness and freshness of aspira- 
tion took possession of her. Then the words of the 
apostle came to her : “ Old things are passed away ; 
behold, all things are become new.’' 

When a soul begins to live a new life, all the 
forms, any ordinance of any church, must give it a 
thrill of strangeness. Each one becomes stamped 
with a peculiar significance in exact ratio to the 
depth of true religious feeling. Dorothy’s new life 
was ushered in under the homeliest auspices. She 
became a Methodist in a small provincial town, three 
fourths of whose inhabitants were ignorant that the 
Church of the masses was founded by an Oxford 
man — a gentleman. 

It is, without doubt, the Church of the poor, 
.of the vulgar, the illiterate. It is the one 
Church which, since the division from the See 
of Rome, opens wide its doors to the poor, who are 
always with us, and, while doing so, gives them an 
opportunity to occupy high places in the synagogue, 
invites them to the wedding feasts, calls them 
brother and sister. Some of these Methodists 
rant, others backslide ; but out of the mighty har- 
vest garnered into this Church for the poor, there 
is more wheat than there are tares ; there is a 
wealth that has been growing, until it is greater 
than that of any other Protestant denomination ; 
there is a membership that is swelling its millions 
and is only second in numbers to Roman Catholicism. 


124 


Dorothy Delafield. 


©HAPIPEI^ X. 


ITHERS’S HALL, from the exterior, pre- 



sents unwonted signs of activity. Its win- 


dows, which, as a rule, are none too clean, are spark- 
ling in the spring sun. The breeze blowing across the 
mill hollow enters them on the south side and goes 
out of the north ones with a long, murmuring croon, 
and on its way lifts the scant hairs from the gray 
head of the aged doctor. The floor of the great, 
bare room is being scrubbed ; and here come two 
carpenters over the chestnut green with a long pile 
of boards. 

Dr. Withers, the recluse, the cripple, the man of 
severe habits, is going to give a supper. There ar^ 
placards all over Quincy announcing the fact. It 
is to be a vegetable supper. All are invited to at- 
tend for the moderate price of three cents each. 
This supper is to consist of soup — its unctiousness 
to be produced solely from vegetable fats and oils. 
There will be bread, but no butter; for Dr. Withers 
scorns to deprive young animals of their natural 
food. There will be apples and roasted potatoes, 
and water pure and cold, and tea and coffee ad lib- 
itum. But grease from milk, or flesh, or fowl — for- 
bid the thought ! 

It would seem that all Quincy intended to come, 
for every one is eager to test the flavors of the food 
Dr. Withers is never weary of advocating. 

The soup is to be the chef-d'oeuvre. This will be 


Dorothy Delafield. 


125 


a concoction, a siimrnuin ho7ium, of all that is ap- 
petizing and nourishing; it will be the article 
of diet which will add converts to his cause, and 
hasten the time when the lion shall lie down with 
the lamb. For Dr. Withers believes that half the 
ills to which flesh is heir will vanish when there 
shall be no more slaughter-houses. 

So the doctor hobbles about with almost adoles- 
cent activity, giving orders here and there, watching 
the tables laid upon horses placed at regular inter- 
vals, and viewing with keen anticipation the piles 
of plates and cups and saucers. What a practical 
sermon to preach ! This is the way to teach great 
truths to the imaginative but illiterate masses. 
Food substantially illustrative will be worth a 
dozen books on vegetarianism. In a spirit of true 
benevolence, this obscure philanthropist hobbles 
about on his one foot, and gives commands with his 
stump of a wrist, waiting, like an impatient school- 
boy, for the afternoon to wane, and four o’clock to 
come, when the first covers will be laid. 

The money taken is to go for the prevention of 
cruelty to animals, now an ancient theme, but then 
original in its freshness. 

It is the good fortune of pleasant-tempered and 
unselfish idiosyncrasy to be beloved. There is not 
a poor man in all Quincy who, while laughing at 
the doctor, does not revere his goodness. It is they 
who know how little of the medicine that leaves 
the dingy old shop and enters their straightened 
homes is ever paid for. Mothers have a way of be- 
lieving that Dr. Withers can almost raise the dead 
to life, and child after child is pointed out as one 


126 


Dorothy Delafield. 


who would have been sleeping beneath a little green 
mound, but for Dr. Withers. Benevolence sits en- 
throned on that high, arching, deeply-furrowed 
brow ; its struggles with sensitiveness and causticity 
about the mouth, set between two deeply-shadow- 
ing creases. 

Dr. Withers would have groaned in spirit and 
groaned audibly could he have visited the various 
dinner tables in the town that day. The butcher- 
shops were emptied in the morning, for all the 
bosses and all the laborers and all the population 
generally had taken care to provide themselves with 
a meal, of which meat and butter were no mean 
accessories. Miles down into the rich valley below 
the Quincy range of hills the news of Dr. Withers’s 
feast had sped, and one and another of the owners 
of those refined and roomy old mansions had de- 
clared his intention of going up to Quincy and tak- 
ing supper. 

Judge Pettibone, the greatest magnate in the 
county, had told his children, Ellice and Nathan, to 
be ready to accompany him. 

Ellice looked up, contemptuously, from her coffee 
as her father expressed this wish, and shrugged her 
shoulders as she said, 

“ Horrid old Quincy! it gives me the blues to go 
there. I have never seen a pretty face or a well- 
fitting gown in the village. When will you have 
done, papa, encouraging all the old oddities in the 
country ? ” 

“ O, come now, Ellice,” said Nathan. “ Dr. With- 
ers is more than an oddity, he is a character. No end 
of money and yet choosing to bury himself there.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


127 


If there is any thing for which Ellice has a solid 
respect it is money. She does not care for it in a 
mercenary, vulgar way, but it means to her oppor- 
tunity. It is one thing to live in a place when you 
can leave it, and another to live in it because you 
are too poor to leave it. So Ellice’s large, brown 
eyes brightened perceptibly as she exclaimed, 

“ Really?” 

“ Yes, really. First one hobby and then another, 
until he has shut himself more and more away from 
his equals, and busies himself ; — how ? well, with 
ameliorating the condition of the unfortunate. 
Now if he can teach the poor to do without meat, 
what a saving.” 

“ They can’t,” said Ellice, with decision. Then, 

Papa, will you give me another small piece of that 
tenderloin ? just a mouthful, perhaps two.” 

Judge Pettibone looks at Ellice a little archly as 
he helps her a second time. 

“ Ellice,” he said, “ I shall never be afraid that 
you will fly away.” 

“ I am sure I don’t want to,” as she carves with 
great satisfaction a mouthful of her tenderloin. “ I 
am a flesh-and-blood daughter of a flesh-and-blood 
father. Now am I not ? Nathan, do I not look the 
very picture of my dear angelic papa ? ” 

Judge Pettibone is a tall, massive man. His 
straight black hair falls slightly over a full, square 
forehead, under which are a pair of keen, jet, slum- 
brous black eyes. He has a straight, hard, but 
honest mouth, a full, straight nose, a heavy but 
clean well-cut jaw. It is a harsh face in repose, a 
very masterful face. But as he looks at Ellice now 


128 


Dorothy Delafield. 


a smile hovers about his mouth, at once tender and 
benign. 

“ I wish you did look more like me,” he says, 
with a slight tinge of disappointment. “ That chin 
of yours, Ellice, that tells the whole story.” 

“ What is the matter with my chin, I would like 
to know 1 ” she exclaimed, grasping the offending 
member, “ it is sharp enough.” 

“ So it is,” said Judge Pettibone. “ It is the jaw, 
after all. You haven’t decision worth a straw, and 
your jaw says so.” 

“ I don’t want a jaw,” said Ellice, “ and I don’t 
need one. You have enough for both of us; and 
how ugly a woman with a jaw is, and how stubborn. 
Now I — ” and Ellice looked at her father. 

“ I am sure,” here interrupted Nathan, “ I should 
not admire Ellice if she had a whit more of a jaw. 
She has enough opinions as it is, and if she looked 
a little more like you, father, she would bristle with 
them.” 

“ Degenerate children of an illustrious sire ! ” ex- 
claimed the judge. 

Judge Pettibone was a widower, forty-nine years 
of age. He lived in a beautiful house with these 
two children. Among his other talents he knew how 
to find and retain a housekeeper who was as per- 
fect an automaton of her kind as though Vulcan 
had forged her on the Olympian heights. He had 
cared for society, he did care for it now ; but it was 
of a masculine order. There were dinner-parties 
given in the old brick hall, but the guests came 
from New York one day and disappeared thence on 
the next. As for the country gatherings, the judge 


Dorothy Delafield. 


129 


attended them at long intervals, and intended to 
attend them oftener two years hence, when Ellice 
should be a little older. 

Meanwhile Ellice already looked like a woman — 
or “ like a man,” Nathan would add, when he 
wished to tease her. She was much above the 
average height, with square shoulders, long limbs, 
large hands and feet. But there was an attractive 
shapeliness about her that defied analysis. At one 
time you would be struck with her hands, so pecul- 
iar and individual. The fingers were singularly 
long and tapering. The flesh was like satin, and 
the coloring like the creamy meat of a well-ripened 
chestnut. Her hair was fine and dark, and she 
dressed it in regular waves brought low over a fore- 
head otherwise much too high. It was gathered 
up in a smoothly braided coil on the top of her 
head, and fastened by a shell comb. Ellice’s head 
sat on her neck with the same swaying gracefulness 
with which a rose sits on its stem, and the suavity 
of its motion, and the sinuousness of her slight yet 
well-knit and commanding figure, made her always 
noticeable. For the rest, she had a prominent nose, 
large almond-shaped brown eyes that had two pre- 
dominant shades of expression. They were either 
tender, entreating, almost languishing brown eyes ; 
or they were keen, shrewd, with a swift calculation 
in them, that made Ellice oftener than not called a 
chip off the old block. But she was called a hand- 
some girl in the country, and there were suitors 
already in wait for her hand or her money, or both. 

But suitors had not yet become a paramount at- 
traction to her. In fact, the charm of life to her 
9 


30 


Dorothy Delafield. 


thus far had lain in her utter irresponsibility. She 
commanded with the imperiousness of an empress, 
but if to-morrow her wishes were other than the 
command, she gave the obedient servant a round 
scolding for his obedience. 

“ It was what you said I must do, Miss Ellice.” 

“ No matter,” Ellice would answer, impatiently. 
“ You might have known better. I wish I could 
find a servant who would know how to please me ! ” 
Strange to say, Ellice was a favorite with all the 
maids and men on the place, notwithstanding her 
whims. She was a favorite every-where, except 
when she came in contact with a nature like her 
own, when she was arrogant and indifferent. 

Ellice loved to rule. She loved abundance, lux- 
ury, sumptuousness. She had a habit of buying 
every thing she liked in large quantities, so as to 
be sure and have enough. Then, when she had 
once used or worn an article it became sacred to 
her. There were boxes and bureaus in the attic 
filled with forsaken finery, but not a ribbon had she 
forgotten or a dress. Once a year Bradford came 
to her mistress, her placid comely face anxiously 
furrowed : 

“ Please, Miss Ellice, hadn’t you and I better go 
over those boxes and bureaus and give some of 
those things to the poor ? ” 

“ Leave those boxes and bureaus alone, Brad- 
ford, and never speak of them to me again. Those 
are my things. If you want to buy garments for 
the poor, why here is money,” and Ellice annually 
handed out a large bill. Bradford would go back 
to her rooms, sigh, and ejaculate. 


Dorothy Delafield. 13 i 

“ The attic will be so full soon we can’t get in it.” 

But when Ellice had a fancy for a person her lav- 
ishness knew no bounds. Kisses and hugs alter- 
nated with gifts, and her fidelity to the memory of 
a forsaken fancy was precisely like that to her cast- 
off dresses. She put it decently away, but would 
never hear any thing ill said of either it or its object. 

The spring afternoon was already subdued by the 
long shadows of the setting sun, as the Pettibone 
family, in a broad, low phaeton, set out for Quincy. 
Ellice herself was the horseman, and one had only 
to look at her, as she held the reins in her strong, 
steady grasp, to feel that she was mistress of the 
two dark chestnut creatures that sped through the 
valley, their long flanks stretching out, their black 
tails flying, their spirited heads curved slightly to 
one side. Nathan sat, with mock resignation, be- 
tween his father and sister, persistently addressing 
Ellice as Tom. 

“ We shall be upset to-night coming down those 
Quincy hills, or I’m mistaken, Tom. It is nonsense 
your driving, and all of us crowding into one seat 
like this. You make a guy of father and me half 
the time.” 

“You don’t care, do you, father?” and Ellice 
grasped the reins in one hand for a moment to 
reach behind Nathan and give her father’s arm a 
little hug. “ The sun rises and sets with me now, 
doesn’t it, papa? ” 

“ Take care ! ” cried Nathan, seizing the reins 
and pulling the horses sharply into the road. “ We 
don’t want to pitch into the ruts on either side of 
this steep hill.” 


32 


Dorothy Delafield. 


They were now leaving their own valley to de- 
scend a long winding hill, which led into a spur of 
the same valley, a narrow shady dell, through 
which the Speedaway was winding southward.* 
Then followed a long slow climb over a badly kept 
road, till they came out on a high level, beyond 
which, a mile away, lying in steps down the steep 
sides of the mountain on which it was built, lay 
Quincy. 

The early twilight was closing in around them, 
but there was a new moon, and here and there in 
the distant village a light shone out, but its bright- 
ness was altogether dimmed the moment the eye 
rested on the deep gulch below the town. All the 
furnace fires, which burned just as fiercely through 
the day, began now to reveal their intense flames, 
displaying a wide, outer rim of deep blue flame ; 
then the inner circle of dusky red, and then the 
central yellow light, shooting upward in a long, 
straight tongue, and again cloven into three or four 
waving jets. Beyond the puddling-furnace lights 
rose two round tall stacks, out of whose mouth 
burst, in unsteady flaring yellow, red, and black, great 
rolling masses of flame and smoke. Such furnaces 
are being replaced nowadays by iron chimneys that 
emit only a dull-heated column of air, doubtless 
more economical, but not half so picturesque. 

“ Ah,” said Ellice, reining her horses in a mo- 
ment before this spectacle, “ that is a sight worth 
seeing; that is all there is to redeem Quincy.” 

“ You forget the falls,” said Nathan. 

“ O, yes; and the river path. Fancy being alone 
there on a dark night I ” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


133 

“Would you be afraid?” asked Nathan, sarcas- 
tically. 

“ Yes, I would,” said Ellice, her large brown eyes 
fastened on the distant furnace flames, her hands 
extended straight before her, and resolutely gath- 
ering up the reins. “ There are two things, and 
only two, that I am afraid of : a dark place and a 
wicked man. I always have expected, and I always 
shall expect, to see ghosts in a dark lonely place. 
As for wicked men, I haven’t such a wide experi- 
ence,” and she gave Nathan a personal look ; “ but 
then I know they are unmitigatedly, awfully dan- 
gerous.” 

“ How uncomfortable you must feel in such close 
proximity to me.” 

Ellice elevated her brows, and touched the horses 
so they suddenly started forward with renewed 
speed. 

“You, you are offensively harmless.” 

Nathan folded his arms across his breast, groom 
fashion, and attempted to look into space with the 
vacant expression of that dumb and automatic 
class. 

He was distinctive in his type. With a larger 
nature than his sister’s, but more negative in his 
whole temperament, if he failed in obtaining the 
good things of this life, it would be because he did 
not reach forth his hand and take them when they 
were within his grasp. He was a tall, straight, 
square-shouldered fellow, with a clear olive com- 
plexion, chestnut-brown hair, and large calm blue- 
gray eyes. His prevailing expression was mild and 
dignified. He was fond of horses, fond of out-door 


134 


Dorothy Delafield. 


life, little of a student, but with a mathematical 
genius which he determined eventually to turn to 
business purposes. 

Judge Pettibone, father of these two handsome 
children who loved physical exercise, all sensuous 
enjoyments, and bade fair to take life as they found 
it, and live out their years in a generous, hospitable 
manner, sometimes had hours of brooding in his 
library. If there was one thing he sighed for more 
than another, it was an intellectual child, boy or 
girl, it mattered not. A mind to develop, to event- 
ually render companionable, to take pride in, and 
to be the perpetuator of his own literary culture, 
would have gratified his highest wishes. Ellice 
had the capacity, but enjoyment with her meant 
change. Sometimes she startled her father with 
her summary of a book, with the discrimination 
evinced in the criticism of persons. Then would 
follow days when she could not be induced to look 
into a book, when she spent entire mornings in the 
kitchen, recipes spread before her, trying first one 
new dish and then another. At such times she 
was the cook’s admiration *and the judge’s despair. 
Or the seamstress would be startled by a formidable 
array of patterns, a dozen new garments would be 
gotten under way, and Ellice would sew morning, 
noon, and night. All at once the sewing would be 
discarded. She would join Nathan, and day would 
follow day in which they would visit friends for 
miles around, or go off to the numerous pict- 
uresque lakes clustering among the Quincy mount- 
ains, and fish and boat until their diversion palled. 
Luckily for Ellice, she had never yet craved the 


Dorothy Delafield. 


135 


excitement of the city, and thus it was that, though 
she was thoroughly pleasure-loving and pleasure- 
seeking, there was a breeziness and healthfulness 
about her nature that made her universally a 
favorite. 

She was a picture to behold as she entered With- 
ers’s Hall. She stood in the door-way a moment, 
and it made a frame around her which, with the 
background of her tall father and brother, brought 
into vivid relief her fine figure and her expectant 
curious face. Her well-fitting dark-brown dress 
was enriched by a wide mink collar, which she had 
unclasped and slightly thrown back ; her hands had 
fallen in front of her, and were joined in the large 
muff— the fashion of those days. Her head had a 
jaunty, masculine look, in a straight-brimmed brown 
hat, which sat on her head sailor-wise. Her brill- 
iant, shrewd, brown eyes wandered over to the long 
tables set on three sides, and now filled with the 
Quincy population, laughing and sipping and mak- 
ing dry comments over the vegetable soup. All at 
once her eyes softened, but the criticism deepened 
in her expression. Presently she turned to Nathan 
and said, 

“ Do you see her ? ” 

“Whom?” and Nathan regarded his sister per- 
versely. 

“ Whom, indeed ! ” and Ellice shook herself im- 
patiently. That blonde over there ! ” 

“Blonde!” now exclaimed Nathan; “she has 
too much coloring of every kind for a blonde.” 

“ Ah, you did see her, then, and 1 dare say you 
know who she is.” 


36 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ I wish I did,” said Nathan, laughing ; “ one 
doesn’t see such a face every day.” 

“ She isn’t pretty,” said Ellice, with a trace of 
speculation in her tone. 

“ Father,” she whispered, with a little excite- 
ment, “ do you see that pretty girl yonder, and do 
you know who she is ? ” 

“ I have been watching her,” replied the judge. 

“ Is she pretty, father ? ” asked Nathan ; “ and is 
she a blonde ? ” 

“ She is artistic,” he replied, with the tone of a 
connoisseur ; “ she looks like the Sistine Madonna.” 

O, I do not think so ; she makes me think of 
Mona Lisa,” Ellice said. 

“ How,” groaned Nathan, mockingly ; “ if she is a 
Mona Lisa, you have at last found a nut to crack. 
Miss Ellice.” 

“ How horribly inelegant,” and Ellice looked 
disdainfully at him. 

Just then Dr. Withers came stumping toward 
them, his countenance unusually softened, and 
quite unconscious of the mixture of good-humor 
and mild sarcasm expressed in the faces of many of 
his guests. He held out his left hand to the judge^ 
his wrinkled old face wreathed in smiles. 

“ Great success, this, judge ; we shall see Quincy 
a vegetarian town yet.” 

The judge, always in deep present sympathy 
with the doctor, said, 

“ I hope so, I hope so,” and then, “ Dr. Withers, 
my daughter is very desirous of knowing who that 
young girl is standing on the other side of the 
room.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


137 


Dr. Withers adjusted his glasses, lifted his head 
a little, as if he were a setter scenting the game, 
and then, a wonderfully gentle, loving expression 
wreathed his features as he answered, 

“Ah, that is little Dorothy Delafield. You are 
acquainted with Robert Delafield ? ” looking at the 
judge ; “ she is a womanly pattern of her father.” 

The judge suddenly sighed, and Ellice glanced at 
him, her bright face clouded. 

“All daughters cannot be like all fathers,” she 
whispered affectionately. Then, in a most effable 
tone and manner, laying her hand on the doctor’s 
arm, “ Will you introduce me to this little Dorothy? 
although I do not think she is small.” 

The doctor limped across the room with Ellice, 
and took the opportunity to say, 

“ She will not be a large woman ; she is as large 
as she ever will be.” 

“ Why?” asked Ellice. 

“ She has more mind and soul than body.” 

“ Happy Dorothy ! ” exclaimed Ellice. 

They had reached her by this time. She was 
standing at one end of the long table, talking famil- 
iarly with Mary Ann Trout, and had not seen Ellice 
approaching. She looked up and suddenly became 
conscious of Dr. Withers and his companion. The 
gray eyes met the brown ones, and the two girls 
looked at each other with undisguised admiration. 

“ Dorothy,” said Dr. Withers, “ Miss Ellice Pet- 
tibone desires to become acquainted with you. 
My friend. Miss Dorothy Delafield, Miss Petti- 
bone.” 

And Dr. Withers all at once manifested a stately 


38 


Dorothy Delafield. 


elegance, which was a great surprise to Ellice and 
a revelation to Dorothy. 

The doctor now hobbled away. Ellice’s eyes at 
once assumed a look of sweetest blandishment and 
invitation, as she glided into a ready conversation 
with Dorothy. 

“ I was remarking to my brother before w^e saw 
Dr. Withers that you were a stranger to me, a 
guest from the city doubtless ? ” 

Ellice had a method in her flattery. She always 
flattered where she liked, but at the same time 
watched the flattery take effect. She expected 
Dorothy to be overwhelmed. 

“ I am not from the city,” said Dorothy, simply; 
“ I live in Quincy.” 

“Ah,” said Ellice, interestedly and questioningly. 

Thus led on, Dorothy continued, 

“ I have always lived here, and I am very fond of 
Dr. Withers. Don’t you think he is a grand old 
man ? ” 

Ellice arched her eye-brows, and looked at Dor- 
othy with laughing inquiry. But Dorothy looked 
straight at her with pure gravity, and Ellice was 
compelled to answer, 

“ I am not acquainted with him ; but, he is an old 
friend for you.” 

“ No,” said Dorothy, as if thinking to herself, 
and with great simplicity added, “ I do not find 
him old.” 

“ You are a Mona Lisa! ” exclaimed Ellice, after 
a pause, and with animation. 

“ Who is Mona Lisa? ” 

“ I dare say you do not know. I did not think ” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


139 


(this with a tone of patronage). “ Mona Lisa is one 
of the most perfect faces ever put upon canvas. 
Titian painted it ; he was a year in doing it. The 
expression is at once inscrutable and beautiful, and 
I think you have something of that expression.” 

“ I thank you very much,” said Dorothy; whether 
for the compliment or information Ellice never 
knew. “ I wish I knew something about pictures 
and artists, but I do not.” 

“ O, I learned most of these statistics in the 
nursery. Not that they are usually taught in nurs- 
eries,” as a blush, and a painful one, mounted to 
Dorothy’s very hair ; “ but papa has peculiar no- 
tions, and one is that nothing should ever be learned 
that has to be unlearned. I never committed a line 
of Mother Goose, and I dare say you remember the 
whole book still.” 

“ I have not that happiness,” replied Dorothy, 
looking right into Ellice’s face, and drawing herself 
perceptibly more erect. 

“ Pardon me,” Ellice said, with the greatest 
suavity ; “ I did not intend to be sarcastic.” 

But Dorothy’s great gray eyes looked at her 
steadfastly, and she continued, with some precipita- 
tion : 

“ What I meant to say was, I am such an igno- 
ramus, that unless I had learned about Titian and 
Raphael and Michael Angelo, and lots of others in 
that way, I should never have learned about them 
at all, though we have so many volumes of engrav- 
ings, and they help, you know.” 

“ Yes,” said Dorothy, very gently, and more than 
satisfied with the apology. 


140 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ O, dear!” now burst forth Ellice; “I have to 
go away to school next autumn. Papa declares it, 
to a Moravian school 1 and I would rather die. pos- 
itively I would. You were not educated in Quin- 
cy ? ” flatteringly again. 

“Yes, I was” — a little shamefacedly — “at least 
I have been so far. But I am going away to school, 
too. Dr. Withers is preparing me.” 

“ Preparing you ! ” exclaimed Ellice, astonished ; 
“ I never heard of a girl preparing.” 

“ I am going to college,” said Dorothy, with dig- 
nity, “ and Dr. Withers is fitting me in Greek and 
Latin.” 

“ I shall cover my face in shame ; and do you 
read off, as you would in English works, in those 
dead languages?” 

Dorothy laughed merrily. 

“ I do not know enough of them yet, even for a 
nursery. I am only just through with my verbs.” 

“ Nathan must meet you. He is another igno- 
ramus, only worse than I am. Here he comes! ” 

Dorothy was conscious of an uncomfortable shy- 
ness on being introduced to this tall young man of 
twenty-two, and Ellice was provoked to see her 
color mount up in her cheeks till they glowed with 
a deep intense pink, although the exquisite fairness 
of her face was only heightened. Dorothy had a 
scared,' bewildered feeling as Nathan simply held 
out his hand and looked at her. She thought those 
calm clear blue eyes very handsome, and Ellice 
otten said, teasingly, to her brother, 

“ All you do is to look at a girl, and you charm 
her. You are a regular old snake.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


141 

Dorothy s mother now approached her daughter, 
and Ellice was still further impressed by this revela- 
tion of quiet ease in Quincy. The difference be- 
tween Dorothy and Mrs. Delafield lay in the fact 
that the world was still before Dorothy, and every 
day and every person meant untold possibilities, 
while with Mrs. Delafield, her circle of vision grad- 
ually narrowing, hope growing less, discouragement 
deepening, the new days bristled with alarms. 
Each strange face meant a possible antagonist. 
She saw at a glance that Dorothy’s companions 
were “ valley people,” and while she was delighted 
that Dorothy should be with them, there was a 
caution and coldness in her manner that non- 
plussed Ellice and made her still more curious. 

Mrs. Delafield’s proud face, her erect, majestic 
carriage, piqued the ardent, susceptible, but haughty 
girl. Who were they that they should not accept 
a bit of condescending kindness from her, Ellice 
Pettibone ? 

If the reader thinks Ellice too young for such re- 
flections, I must insist that it belongs to youth 
untried, delighting in the resources garnered in the 
past by ancestors moldering beneath the sod, to 
vaunt itself because of that past, and their own lux- 
urious present. Ellice felt that she should enjoy her- 
self now ; why not ? since she had all for which men or 
women strive. Dorothy, trained from her infancy 
to look on and on always into a golden future of 
fame, fortune, and success, seldom counted the 
fatigue or denial of the present. No matter what 
she went without now, sometime, in the far distant 
years, it would be more than made up. How 


142 


Dorothy Delafield. 


natural for her, the transition from the best that 
earth could give, to the unimaginable glories of the 
unseen world. How natural for Ellice to turn 
from misery, pain, deformity, and poverty as things 
disagreeable and unreal. 

The tables were now ready for others, and Dor- 
othy was turning away with her mother, when Ellice 
extended her hand impulsively and affectionately. 

Dorothy took it eagerly, and Ellice’s warm fin- 
gers closed around it in a tight grasp as she said, 

“ May I call on you ? ” 

Mrs. Delafield turned a second, a light so sweet, 
so maternal, overspreading her features, and before 
Dorothy could reply, she said, 

“ I am sure Dorothy will be only too delighted 
to have you call.” 

“Yes, do come,” whispered Dorothy, almost 
pleadingly. 

“And how do you like my soup, Dorothy? ” 

It was Dr. Withers leaning on her chair, his 
wrinkled face earnestly regarding the smooth, fair 
one, as Dorothy held a spoonful of the liquid food 
uplifted. 

“ It is excellent, indeed it is ; but ” — then with 
increasing brightness — “ this is my second plate.” 

The old man shook his head, much disappointed. 

“ It is the one thing I cannot reconcile about 
you, my girl. If you would eat this soup every day 
for a month, you wouldn’t want any other food. It 
has every ingredient essential to health, and to the 
vaiiety which the appetite craves.” 

The doctor passed on, and Mrs. Delafield said, 
warningly. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


143 


“ I should be very sorry, Dorothy, if you imbibed 
any of Dr. Withers’s queer notions about food. He 
would never have lost an arm and a leg if his 
system had been properly nourished.” 

“ I wish, mother,” said Dorothy, with a strain of 
regret in her tone, “ I wish I hadn’t such an appe- 
tite ; but I am so hungry always that this soup 
would never satisfy me.” 

Jonas Wheeler sat quite at the farther end of this 
table, with Reginald and Sallie beside him, and 
Mrs. Wheeler towering high over them all, her 
cheeks and head slightly shaking as one spoonful 
of soup after another disappeared. 

“ Regy, pass your plate for some more,” she 
found time to say ; “ this is all the supper you can 
have to-night.” 

“ Say, mother,” said Reginald, placing his hands 
on his trousers’ pockets, “ they’re full, stuffed tight.” 

“ You’re a regelar Wheeler,” and her neck creased 
with laughter. “ I bet Sallie haint had such a 
thought. Jonas, did you hear? Regy’s filled his 
pockets.” 

“ I told him to,” responded Jonas, swallowing his 
soup with a gulp. ‘‘ The old doctor is rich, an’ he’s 
bound to help the poor ; it’s the Lord’s way of per- 
viding. Here, Sallie, chuck them into your pocket,” 
having extended his arm over the table and taken a 
couple of large apples. 

Mrs. Prout, who was watching these movements, 
now said to her mild, industrious husband, 

“ The Wheelerses are ’fraid, as usual, of bein’ 
cheated out of their money’s wurth. Ef I was nigh 
enough I’d give ’em a look.” 


44 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ O, hush ; you’re allers a givin’ looks, an’ what 
do people care ? Mean, vulgar persons like the 
Wheelerses aint got no shame.” 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Prout, sitting straighter and 
straighter, and looking more and more sternly 
toward the offenders, “ I make it a principle to 
speak my mind to such people. Somebody ’as to ; 
’ow’s the world to be improved ? ” 

“A woman’s got ’nough to do if she tends her 
babbies, and keeps her ’ouse.” 

“ Do you mean to insinivate, Henoch, that I’m 
failin’ in sich things? I’m sure it’s slave, slave, 
from morning till night for my fam’ly. There’s 
Mary Ann, she don’t hearn the salt in her bread. 
I don’t know why a mother’s got to work for ’ealthy 
.childern. Now when I was Mary Ann’s age I was 
a beaming my own livin’.” 

“ I’ve got ’nough for you an’ Maiy^ Ann, so 
where’s the use?” and Enoch swallowed his food 
much after Jonas’s fashion. 

“ There aint no use, ef Mary Ann’s obedient 
and properly grateful ; but I’ve allers said, an’ I say 
it now, “ I will never ’ave ungrateful childern.” 

Mary Ann during this peroration looked more 
and more subdued, and presently a sob and a rain- 
fall of tears choked both her utterance and epi- 
glottis. 

“ Miss Prout,” now said the irate husband, “you 
air allers a getten hup scenes. Mary Ann dassent 
say her soul’s her own.” 

“You haint afflicted with hany sich trouble,” 
responded Mrs. Prout, with a tantalizing sneer. 
“ I was not a sayin’ as Mary Ann was ungrateful. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


145 


I was only sayin’ ef she should be. Now stop, stop, 
Mary Ann, I hav’n’t no fault ter find wi’ yeh ter-day.” 

Enoch’s head fell lower and lower over his soup. 
He adopted a conciliatory tone. He handed his 
wife the bread in a coaxing manner, and Mrs. 
Prout, conscious that she had had the last word, 
bridled, but condescended to let her husband serve 
her. 

Jonas, who had observed this small scene, al- 
though it had been conducted more quietly than 
usual, groaned to himself, and his harmonious wife 
turning to him inquired, 

“ What is it, Jonas ? ” 

“ The depravity, the depravity in this here 
world ! Them Prouts quarrel together night and 
day.” 

“Yes; and what a crest-fallen look Prout ’as. 
’Ow pleasant it is ter see bruthren dwell together 
in unity ; it is like the ile on Aaron’s beard.” 

Reginald now chuckled. 

“ It’s like the ile on yourn, pappy; it’s just run- 
nin’ down.” 

Jonas gave another groan, but a fainter one, as he 
wiped this extremely long badge of his masculinity. 

“ Regy will make a lawyer yit.” 

“ I aint a goin’ to be a lawyer. I’m goin’ to be 
a butcher ! ” 

“An’ so you shall, ef yer want ter,” said his 
mother. “ Ef Dr. Withers had heerd that, ef he 
had, what a joke it ’ud a been, an’ at his own vege- 
table supper! Well, Jonas, aire you through.? I 
guess we ’ave all eat our three cents’ wuth.” 

The evening had now closed in. The windows 
10 


Dorothy Delafield. 


146 

of the hall were all shut, and covered with steam. 
Groups were passing in and out, and Dorothy and 
her mother, tired of the close air, of the jostling 
and crowding and rude jokes, went out of the hall 
and down the stairs just as Nathan was about to go 
and bring the phaeton to the door. Ellice waved 
her hand at Dorothy, and Dorothy’s whole face 
lighted with a happy glow. 

The mother and daughter walked home in silence. 
They had only removed their wraps, and were clus- 
tering round the fire, when the knocker of the front 
door sounded violently, 

“Something is the matter!” exclaimed Mrs. 
Delafield, as she seized a lamp and hurried to the 
door. “ Something has happened ! ” 

Peering out into the darkness she beheld a con- 
fusion of horses, phaeton, and people. As she 
looked she saw two men carrying a girl in their 
arms toward the gate. She recognized Judge Pet- 
tibone and Nathan. 

“ We have had an accident, and my daughter has 
fainted. I do not know whether she is hurt.” 

They passed through the narrow gate-way up the 
steps and into the hall, and then Nathan, for the 
first time, recognized the lady. 

The parlor door was open, and Ellice was carried 
in and laid on the stiff hair-cloth sofa. Dorothy 
came forward, with frightened face, and clasping her 
hand on Nathan’s arm, whispered, 

“ Is she hurt ? ” 

Nathan looked down into the sweet upturned 
face a second with his steady gaze, and said, 

“ I do not know. The horses came plunging 


Dorothy Delafield. 


147 


down the hill. Ellice would insist on driving. 
They got into a tangle some way. I sprung out as 
the left horse fell down, and Ellice tried to follow. 
Her foot caught and she fell.” 

At this juncture Ellice opened her eyes, and see 
ing Dorothy, sat up. She tried to rise, but fell 
back, exclaiming, 

“ O, my foot ! ” 

Mrs. Delafield had been applying restoratives, 
and now she kneeled down and gently unfastened 
the boot, and drew off the stocking. 

“She has sprained her ankle, I think,” Mrs. Dela- 
field said, holding in her hand the already swelling 
member. 

The judge looked surprised and shocked when he 
found that his daughter was really injured. Re- 
covering his composure after a moment, he told 
Nathan to go and bring Dr. Withers, adding, 

“ Perhaps it is not so serious but that we can 
drive Ellice home.” 

He sat down beside Ellice, and, examining the 
foot, changed color as he exclaimed, 

“ She has broken her ankle.” 

“ Broken it ! ” cried ' Ellice ; and Dorothy rushed 
forward and knelt beside her. 

“ I shall have to avail myself of your kindness,” 
said the judge, turning to Mrs. Delafield. “ If you 
would have a bed prepared for her I could carry 
her up stairs, and it would be less painful. 

It was Dorothy who sprang to her feet, saying, 

“ I will get the room ready, mamma; stay by Miss 
Pettibone.” 

She ran up the stairs and hastened to the pretty 


Dorothy Delafield. 


148 

guest chamber. It was warm and cozy. She 
opened the snowy bed, adjusted the pillows for the 
invalid, hurried down stairs, and said, softly, 

“ It is ready, sir.” 

The judge bent over his daughter with the ten- 
derness of a woman, as he put his strong arms 
under her. Her head fell faintly on his shoulder as 
her color blanched under the effort. 

“ Dear friend,” whispered Dorothy, taking the 
hand which fell so nervelessly. 

Ellice opened her eyes a second, and half- 
smiled at Dorothy. 

“ Stay by me,” she said. 

That little request made Dorothy almost joyful. 
She led the way for the tall, grave judge. She stood 
just within the door, pointing the way to the bed, 
which to her was such a sumptuous resting-place, 
her face uplifted, full of mute, wistful sympathy. 

Judge Pettibone felt the fineness of her face and 
expression, even while he appeared not to see 
them. He laid his daughter down with infinite 
gentleness, then turning to Dorothy, as if he ap- 
pealed to her, he said, 

“ Care for her, as if an angel had entered un- 
awares.” 

“ Ah, I think one has,” replied Dorothy, smil- 
ingly, and yet so gently that he saw all at once a 
lonely heart twining its ideal around his daughter. 
He laid his hand on Dorothy’s soft abundant hair, 

“ I know you are a loving girl, and I can trust 
my Ellice to you. She is my only daughter ; ” this 
with a grave, appealing tone that was irresistible to 
Dorothy. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


149 


The plain little home, so plain, so small, com- 
pared with the stately rooms of his own abode ; this 
reticent but graceful, energetic mother, and her 
blossom of a daughter, struck him in a dreamy far- 
off way. All the time, while thinking only of Ellice, 
like a melody to his solicitude, came the congen- 
erousness of his companions for the situation. 
While he sat there, silent and thoughtful. Dr. With- 
ers and Nathan entered. 

Ellice’s cold hand was clasped in Dorothy’s warm 
one, while the doctor examined her ankle. 

“ A bad fracture,” he exclaimed, at length. Then 
glancing into Ellice’s face with his nervous, kind 
glance, he said, 

“ How much can you bear?” 

Ellice looked at him a second, her eyes half-closed, 
but her shrewd, inquiring expression lighting ; then 
clasping Dorothy’s hand more closely, she said, with 
firm determination, 

“ Try me.” 

Dr. Withers set his lips together, which always 
implied with him mingled decision and sympathy, 
and took the ankle in hand. It was difficult to set ; 
but Ellice uttered no scream or moan. The per- 
spiration came out in great beads on her forehead. 
She clinched her hands tighter and tighter, but that 
was all. 

“ There ! ” said Dr. Withers, at length ; “ you 
have been a brave woman.” 

She opened her eyes now, bright with unshed 
tears. Her father was bending over her. She 
looked at him, while a flash of mischievous light 
darted into them, and said, 


Dorothy Delafield. 


150 

“ Have I enough jaw ? ” 

The judge laughed heartily. He exclaimed, 

“ A fraction more would spoil you.” 

In what a beautiful way to Dorothy had this new 
chapter in her life opened. 

It seemed highly appropriate to her imaginative 
mind that Ellice and she should be alone together 
in the blue-gray room, for it had been arranged that 
she should sleep with Ellice. 

As Dorothy unrobed for the night Ellice watched 
her with mingled shrewdness and afifectionateness. 
What was it that attracted her so to this girl? 
There was something moreover that seemed to 
place a shadowy barrier between them. 



PART SECOND. 


©HAPIPBI^ I. 

A MONTH after the events related in the last 
chapter Ellice sat in an easy-chair before one 
of the windows in the room that she and Dorothy 
had occupied together, idly watching Dorothy, who 
was studying, and anon looking out of the window. 
Dorothy’s assiduity, which she had observed 
through this month of illness and convalescence, 
troubled her complacent love of ease. It seemed 
to give Dorothy an unfair advantage over her — a 
quality of character which made the sick girl feel 
less strong. She much enjoyed thinking that she 
could do whatever another did if she chose. But 
she wondered now, in a fitful way, whether she could 
apply herself as Dorothy did. If her companion 
had been dull, spiritless, unimaginative, that would 
have settled the question just now ; but every thing 
about Dorothy suggested strength. 

Ellice’s final judgments were always from people, 
never from theories which she formulated and then 
pursued logically. Girl as she was, therefore, she 
comprehended fairly the scope of her circumstances, 
and exercis'ed a certain power, which was marked 
over her inferiors. On the other hand, the slowness 
of Dorothy’s judgment sometimes made her conduct 
so passive, that she was imposed upon. Seldom 
meeting young girls who at all coped with her in 


152 


Dorothy Delafield. 


the rich vitality of her nature, and never before 
having met one of Dorothy’s type, Ellice’s instinct- 
ive desire, as she became better acquainted, was to 
absorb Dorothy into her own views and habits. 

Judge Pettibone had scores of Greek and Latin 
and other writers, that Ellice enjoyed knowing were 
in their library. She often spent an evening in 
handling the books, arranging them, and making a 
general acquaintance with their covers. She could 
talk in a way to scare Dorothy about the types of 
this publishing-house or that, about bindings, Edu 
Hons de Luxe^ and Ellice had done a great deal of 
such talking for a week past. 

Dorothy’s first inquiry in each case as to what 
the book was about, in detail, annoyed her. She 
would waive the question with her long, shapely 
hand, and, 

“ I never got farther than the index or the illus- 
trations.” 

Then Dorothy, not to be behind with intellectual 
pabulum, would translate a sentence of Caesar or 
Xenophon, which Ellice, not unnaturally in such a 
detached state, found wholly uninteresting and un- 
suggestive. Yet there was something in it all, or 
in Dorothy, she could not quite tell which, that 
seemed valuable. 

“ Dorothy, put your books away ! ” finally ex- 
claimed Ellice. • 

Dorothy looked up with an absent-minded inquiry 
in her eyes. 

“ In a few minutes,” and again she was absorbed. 

“ Do-ro-thy ! ” said Ellice, after a few minutes’ 
pause. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


153 


What?” 

“ There is no use in all this studying. You are 
never going to speak Greek or Latin ; you are not 
even going to teach.” 

“ I may,” replied Dorothy. “ I am going to do 
something. Just now I am disciplining my mind 
and cultivating my taste. Dr. Withers says there 
is no way equal to this, and I like it,” she added, 
laughing, as Ellice exclaimed, 

“ Nonsense ! There is a better way ; you can 
learn to speak French and German, to play the 
piano, to draw a little ; all this would, at least, culti- 
vate your taste.” 

“ It would not exercise my strength, develop my 
intellectual muscle, as Dr. Withers says.” 

“ Girls with muscle are ugly. Nathan says my 
arms would be prettier if the muscles were fat.” 

‘^Yes; but they would have muscles none the 
less. Would you give up your power to control 
horses, to walk miles, to play ball with Nathan ? 
You are not as pretty as you might have been,” 
looking at Ellice, studiously ; “ but you are grand 
in your looks. I think I would rather have you as 
you are,” continued Dorothy, to the astonished 
Ellice, who always expected to be judged without 
qualifications. 

“ I don’t enjoy you as you are ; you are too book- 
ish, too prim, too — I want to shake you up a little. 
You don’t enjoy yourself a bit, Dorothy ; you know 
you don’t.” 

Dorothy examined Ellice with a long, inquiring, 
wondering look, before she replied, 

“ It isn’t a question of enjoyment.” 


154 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“•Well ! I would like to know what it is, then ? ” 

“ It is doing your duty, forgetting yourself. It is 
being something better and better, greater and 
greater.” 

“ Better and better, greater and greater — the first 
should be last, Dorothy. What if you know you 
cannot be better, and what if you know there is no 
greatness in you?” 

“ There is ! ” said Dorothy, dogmatically. 

“ I am more humble,” answered Ellice, delighted 
to have gotten Dorothy into a full tide of conver- 
sation. “ I will tell you what I think of myself. I 
have worked out a theory which fits my case ex- 
actly. Do you remember the old Persian theory 
that there are two forces contending for the mas- 
tery of the world — a spirit of good and a spirit of 
evil?” 

“ That is the Christian religion.” 

“ No, it is not. The Persians believe that the 
world is a kind of ball to send from one of these 
great powers to the other, and that it is an open 
question yet which will win. That accounts, you 
see, for the triumph of the bad, as often as the tri- 
umph of the good. Now, as I have nothing to do 
with this contest, I follow first one and then the 
other.” 

Dorothy had too active and far-reaching a mind 
to be shocked, as Ellice had expected her to be. A 
new thought was opened before her. Suppose 
there were two such gods, Ellice might choose the 
good, and she replied, accordingly, 

“ I am too lazy to choose,” said Ellice. “ Besides, 
it involves too much. How silly to cope with either 


Dorothy Delafield. 


55 


power. I think it is heathenish to try to propitiate 
a god, or gods. Then, too, fortune in every form 
is such a fickle goddess, that you woo her most 
when you ignore her. I am good, therefore, 
when I feel like being good, and bad when I 
feel like being bad. On the whole, I oftener 
worship Ormuzd, the spirit of evil, because I 
incline more frequently that way.” 

Ellice was leaning far back in her chair, her 
liquid brown eyes half shut, and regarding Dorothy 
with a look of silent flattery and amused inquiry, 
which nettled Dorothy’s simple, quiet mind. She 
had so much dignity, such an excess of intellectual 
self-consciousness, that she had no notion of being 
made sport of by Ellice. Her theories of Christian 
duty and of imperiled souls inclined her, however, 
to appear ridiculous rather than allow Ellice, by 
any possibility, to seriously entertain heterodox 
theories. So Dorothy set herself to work to prove, 
in a labored but unaffectedly sweet manner, and to 
Ellice’s intense delight, the peril her friend was in. 

“ O, Dorothy, you are a regular Fra Bartolomeo. 
If you were thinner, I should insist on seeing you 
painted on a flat gold back-ground, your two hands 
clasped so ; ” and as Ellice put her hands together 
she said, “ I think my hands would fit the picture 
better than yours. You haven’t saintly hands, little 
Dorothy. Your eyes should have a far-away look, 
as they have ; you should have a preserved, pressed- 
out, spiritual look, which would make a suitable 
panel picture for a church. 

Dorothy’s eyes filled, but the tears did not fall. 
She simply said. 


156 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ I was speaking seriously to you, Ellice/’ 

“ And I am really serious in what I say,” replied 
Ellice, with earnestness. ‘‘ I have an immense 
amount of strength in me which is never used. If 
I had been a wood-chopper, or a washer-woman, I 
suppose it would have passed out through my 
fingers. I have to do something. The first thing 
I shall do, when I have the use of this foot, will be 
to mount a horse and scour the country for miles. 
I feel as if I would like to test myself in all sorts 
of ways. Not with books,” and Ellice shook her 
head warningly. “ But I feel so strong, and I must 
live out-of-doors, and I must meet lots of people, 
and I must tease them, and I must have my own 
way. Now you can wait and wait, and sit and sit ; 
that is why you would make a good Fra Bartolomeo. 
Every thing is a mystery ; that you and I are sitting 
here is a mystery ; that you are Dorothy Delafield 
and I am Ellice Pettibone is a mystery. You have 
been made with tastes just beyond you all the time. 
I have been made to seize hold of every thing right 
around me and to love pleasure, and to find it. 
What is the use of my living in the future, or of 
your living in the present? We can’t. I do not 
make any complaints, but what I want I mean to 
have. I mean to be just what I am, and enjoy 
just what I was born with a taste for. What I like 
I worship.” 

But your real tastes are good ones,” and Dor- 
othy spoke as if Ellice were a little girl playing at 
being naughty. 

“ Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are 
not,” said Ellice, positively; ‘‘that is, from the 


Dorothy Delafield. 


157 


ordinary point of view. My tastes are my likings. 
No one ever has a taste for what he does not want. 
The only thing I have never had, that I really de- 
sired, was to have all this something in me which is 
so impatient and restive consumed, absorbed, 
reached by something, or somebody. That is what 
I want most. I want you, though, Dorothy, also.” 

“ Want me ? ” 

“Yes, I want you to spend the winter with me. 
I want to teach you to ride, to leap fences, to talk 
on something besides books and religion. I want 
you to love me, only you must let me have my own 
way, always that.” 

“And give up my way, always?” 

“ O, after a while my ways will be yours. You 
will like the things that I do, if you will only try 
them long enough,” and Ellice shook her head back 
and forth in absolute confirmation of this assertion. 

“ Ellice, you have heard my mother talk about 
me enough to know that there is something I have 
to accomplish before all that, must accomplish,” and 
Dorothy’s lips came together firmly. 

“ Well, it can be done, too. See here, Dorothy, 
Dr. Withers is all very well to look at from afar, a 
grand old hulk, a veteran philanthropist, a rich old 
man, with a hundred hobbies. But, Dorothy, just 
as sure as you spend your mornings in that herba- 
rium for human beings of his for two years, all the 
youthful sap will be dried out of you. I think you 
are morbid. I think you will do ever so much more 
good, and be ever so much more likely to be a 
great woman — a woman with a career ” (and Ellice 
opened her eyes and made Dorothy feel all at once 


158 


Dorothy Delafield. 


like a simpleton) — “ if you see something of the 
world. Why, what do you know outside of the 
Methodist Church, Dr. Withers, and your home? 
Absolutely nothing ! ” and Ellice sat bolt upright. 

“ You need not try to make me ashamed of such 
knowledge,” and Dorothy arched her brows and 
neck. “ It is good, wholesome knowledge.” 

“ So it is,” said Ellice, kindly, but patronizingly ; 
“ but it is the kind of knowledge that Miss Dainty, 
and Mrs. Prout, and Brother Smith, and all the 
sistering have. Do you expect them to be farmers ? ” 

What girl is there in all the world who will not 
suddenly feel her faith and confidence in the best 
in her life suddenly waver before such assertions. 
Dorothy was, after all, much like other girls, and 
all her hope and pride and comfort left her, and 
she stood there before Ellice for a moment a mis- 
erable, narrow, ignorant girl in her own estimation, 
without claim to any thing. 

“ Now, Dorothy, if you will come home with me, 
I will tell you what shall be done.” 

“ I shall never enter your house ! ” Dorothy sud- 
denly ejaculated with a great sob that convulsed 
her frame. “ If you are Ellice Pettibone, you are 
rude and unkind, and — I did not think it of you.” 

Dorothy sat down all in a heap on the floor. 

Ellice looked irresolute and abashed, but only for 
a second. Then she hobbled to her feet, and going 
over to her friend sat down beside her, and kissed 
and caressed and soothed ; telling loving Dorothy, 
between the kisses, how much she loved her and 
admired her, and “ thought her the best girl, the 
dearest saint, she had ever known.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


159 

“ You are not like Mrs. Prout, of course not; but 
you do not want to associate with such people till 
you are grown. Come to me, dear Dorothy, to 
make me good, and I promise you I will study 
with you. We will have teachers and professors, 
and lessons just as long as you can take, and I will 
study for love of you, and, perhaps, grow good and 
wise, too ; who knows ! Think of the difference be- 
tween my beautiful home and Dr. Withers. I am 
sure you must say it is a much better place for fine 
and great thoughts. Papa has said over and over 
that I must have a companion and teachers, or else 
go away to school. You will delight him.’’ 

Dorothy wiped her eyes between her sobs, which 
grew fewer and fewer. She looked up finally, and 
putting her arms around Ellice’s neck, kissed her, 
and said, 

“Your home must be very beautiful, and I would 
like to live in such a place. I have always loved 
beautiful things ; but how could I go? I can’t leave 
my mother.” 

“ You are going away sometime, to study. If 
papa is willing to let me have the best teachers, 
and all the books we want, I am sure no place could 
be finer. Then, too, papa is such a scholar. He 
would help us, and, perhaps, put you in the way of 
fulfilling your destiny, as you call it. Do come ; 
please come,” and Ellice twined her arms about her 
friend, and held her in a close grasp, quite irresist- 
ible to Dorothy, who had always, until this friend- 
ship offered, lavished so much love and demonstra- 
tion unsought and unreturned. 

At this moment Mrs. Delafield entered with a 


i6o Dorothy Delafield. 

cup of bouillon for Ellice, and greatly astonished to 
see her calm Dorothy looking so excited. 

“ O, Mrs. Delafield,” and Ellice made a comical 
attempt to rise, and then dragged herself, kneeling, 
to Mrs. Delafield. 

“ O, Mrs. Delafield, I have .such a fine project. I 
want Dorothy to go home with me till we become 
accomplished, and Dorothy ready to do great 
things. Say she may come ? ” and Ellice took Mrs. 
Delafield’s hand between hers. “ I am bad, and 
Dorothy good ; she is the very friend for me. I 
know papa would be ecstatic.” 

Mrs. Delafield saw one more link in the chain of 
circumstances to lead Dorothy from obscurity to 
glory. Dr. Withers’s influence on her daughter’s 
nature, which was already too intense, fretted her 
very much of late. Dorothy would change in so 
many ways for the better in a home like Judge 
Pettibone’s. 

“ It would be a fine opportunity for daughter,” 
and Mrs. Delafield stroked Ellice’s waving hair. 

“You hear that, Dorothy,” said Ellice, delight- 
edly, helping herself up with Mrs. Delafield’s assist- 
ance, and returning to her chair ; “ O, I am sure it 
can be arranged.” 

A knock on the door interrupted the conversa- 
tion, and Ellice screamed with delight as Dr. With- 
ers and Judge Pettibone were admitted. 

“ Dorothy, destiny ! ” she cried, and Dorothy, 
who had caught the spirit, looked at her with great 
shining eyes and quivering lips, not many traces of 
tears remaining save in the rich glow in her cheeks. 

Judge Pettibone and Dr. Withers both looked 


Dorothy Delafield. i6i 

grave, as if they had received a shock, and had not 
yet recovered from its effects. 

“ The president has called for seventy-five thou- 
sand troops,” said Judge Pettibone, gravely. 

“ The cry of four millions of the oppressed has 
prevailed with heaven,” said Dr. Withers, in a 
monotone of great solemnity. “ If there be a God 
of justice, a war of such scope as this country has 
never seen is upon us.” 

The two girls were awed, and Mrs. Delafield, who 
had studied the political issues of those momentous 
years from 1856 till 1861, said, 

“ Right will prevail.” 

“ I shall offer my services as surgeon,” said the 
doctor, grimly ; “ I guess there is enough strength 
left in this old body to take care of a good many of 
Uncle Sam’s children. First time I have ever felt 
proud of my country.” 

“ My husband must go,” said Mrs. Delafield ; “I 
wish I were a man ! ” 

Some must remain at home,” said the judge. 
“ Some must take care of the women and children.” 

“ There are Spartans left yet,” replied Mrs. Del- 
afield. “ The women and children can take care of 
themselves.” 

“ Dorothy, you may have to be a Joan instead of 
a Hypatia,” and the doctor smiled at Dorothy. 

Ellice seized the opportunity to present her plan, 
and, to her great delight, Judge Pettibone thought 
most favorably of it. Dr. Withers also approved-, 
although with many secret misgivings about placing 
Dorothy so entirely under the influence of the 
pleasure-loving and reckless Ellice. 

11 


Dorothy Delafield. 


162 


©HAPIFBI^ II. 

S LOWLY and surely the four years* civil war 
settled down upon the United States. It 
is not my purpose to draw any pictures of that ter- 
rible contest, except as it inevitably affects the 
characters of my story. I leave it to others to de- 
scribe the culmination of opinions nourished years 
before the contest, and testing their dignity in that 
deadly encounter. Suffice it for me to say that 
localities like Quincy, steeped in provincialism, went 
forth almost bodily, to send home a remnant — but a 
remnant with larger ideas, newer fashions, farther- 
reaching hopes. Men who had pursued their quiet 
calling on the farm, at the furnace, behind counters, 
returned captains, colonels, generals, put in the ma- 
jority of cases, only privates. While it is the glory 
of the war, that when it was concluded such men 
resumed the work they had left, it is also to its 
glory that they brought home with them a lesson 
of victory and of right maintained which, in 
twenty years, has transformed us as a nation. We 
stood fourth among the nations in 1865 ; in 1885 
we stand second. The material well-being that 
seemed about to be buried forever came up out of 
that black grave of despair, larger, purer, fuller — a 
flower, where before was only a seed ; a Prome- 
theus unbound, where before was a giant bolted to 
the earth by the fetters of an enslaved nation. 

The little town of Quincy was agitated to its 


Dorothy Delafield. 163 

depths. It seemed a question whether men enough 
would be left to stir the fires, and puddle the iron 
in its vast furnaces. But iron was needed, and so the 
mills were run by the sons, as fathers left one after 
the other. Boys ran away to be brought home with 
indignant hearts and rueful faces. The public school 
was turned into a hospital apparently, for every- 
where, on desks and tables, was piled the old linen 
of the town and neighborhood, and trembling young 
fingers scraped the lint for the pitiful wounds of 
those pitiful battles yet unfought. Little children 
brandished the city papers that Job brought in 
stacks, marvelous to behold, to the now reading 
Quincy public, and more than one young voice 
cried out to young hearts that thrilled with a sink- 
ing dread, “ The war*s begun ! the war’s begun ! ” 

Robert Delafield’s fine, enthusiastic nature was 
fired with a desire to be among the first volunteers. 
It needed no urging from his wife for him to pre- 
sent himself as one of the first seventy-five thousand 
men called forth for the Nation’s help. But disap- 
pointment, that hovered like a bird of ill omen in all 
the plans of that little home, was ready to brood over 
this new effort. Robert was set aside by the exam- 
ining physician as unfit for the hardships of war. 
Mrs. Delafield sat whole days thinking now over her 
country’s peril, and now hugging to her heart the 
delight of keeping her husband, and again with 
burning heart and asking eyes, thinking of all the 
chances lost of fame and change. 

“ It is all in your father, Dorothy,” she would say, 
over and over ; “ he is great, he would rise — but al- 
ways to be tied to a country store, and to Quincy.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


164 

“If I am great, dear wife,” Robert would reply, 
“ be content with the fact. There is as much in- 
ward blessedness coming through a country store, 
as from a battle-field.” 

But all the same, the deep calm of his poetic, self- 
poised nature was stirred as it had never been before. 

Well as Mrs. Delafield knew her husband, be- 
lieved in him, loved him, it belonged to Dorothy’s 
quicker intuition to detect the slight droop of his 
fine, sweet mouth, the endless patience of his un- 
complaining nature, as he saw one after another of 
the lusty puddlers and nailers lay aside their iron 
implements of peace for the iron implements of 
war. Dorothy knew how hard it was for him to 
make those weary rounds about the counters, to see 
the groups of men grow smaller in the corners, and 
to watch the shrinkage in luxuries in the humble 
homes, from whose modest incomes the Company’s 
store thrived. 

All the same the spring passed into summer, the 
mountain sides rejoiced in their ethereal fragrance 
of wild odors and forest plenty, the valleys bore 
richer harvests than usual, the soil of Virginia drank 
its first full quaff of the life blood of Northern loy- 
alty, and Bull Run became the first battle of the 
past of that disastrous first year. 

Dr. Withers had left long ago, and half of the 
variety of the little Delafield home was occasioned 
by his grim and graphic letters describing the new 
scenes by which he was surrounded. He left a 
bank account in Robert’s care, and both husband 
and wife were startled over and over by the heavy 
drains he was making from month to month. 


Dorothy Delafield. 165 

“ There will be nothing left for his old age ! ” Mrs. 
Delafield would exclaim. 

And Robert, with his fine smile, would reply, 

“ I think the doctor’s old age has been lived.” 

“ Do you think he will die ? ” gasped Dorothy. 

“Ye ‘shall mount up with wings as eagles,’” said 
her father. 

“ O, I don’t want Dr. Withers to die ! ” said 
Dorothy. 

“ He has died to Quincy,” said Mrs. Delafield, 
emphatically. “ Ah ; I wish I need never lay eyes 
oh it again ! ” 

“Mother! mother!” and Robert put his arms 
about her neck and kissed her. 

She looked into his face with such a hungry, lov- 
ing look, 

“ Forgive me ; Quincy is better than any other 
place without you.’’ 

Dorothy, like the fair-haired angel who holds the 
crown in Botticelli’s picture in the Uffizi, beamed in 
loving admiration upon them. 

Meanwhile, Dorothy studied as best she could. 
But Greek and Latin, when a pupil is not beyond 
the first book of the^neid and the Iliad, are slow, 
laborious work. Nevertheless, she made fair prog- 
ress. Construing faithfully, and according to her 
knowledge, often wrong, but gaining in that intel- 
lectual self-reliance, which is the finest stamp, next 
to that holy grace which Jeremy Taylor describes 
so eloquently, that can be put upon a human 
countenance or character. Like the three youths 
in the Book of Daniel, she grew fairer and fairer to 
behold, not with that excess of development which 


i66 Dorothy Delafield. 

is so much the fashion nowadays, and which takes 
away all the fine suggestiveness of youth, but with 
a strength and slenderness of figure which kept all 
her lines graceful and youthfully defined. 

“ How well Dorothy’s head sits on her neck,” 
said her father, one day, to Mrs. Delafield, looking 
at Dorothy through the door of their sitting-room, 
as she was standing in the west window of their 
little parlor, in a flood of October sunlight. 

“Dorothy could be a queen,” said Mrs. Dela- 
field. 

“ The crown would crush her,’’ replied her father. 
“ Dorothy has too much of myself in her to enjoy 
power of that kind.” 

“ She loves her dignity, and if she believed 
royalty were hers, she would never relinquish it, ’ 
said her mother. 

“ All the same, the defense of it would kill her.” 

“ I do not believe it. If she have your sweetness 
and generosity, she has my pride. I am willing to 
stake all my ambitions on Dorothy.” 

Robert looked askance at his wife for a second 
with profound melancholy. He loved her with 
great tenderness, but he worshiped the good abso- 
lutely; and in doing so he knew that he failed in a 
certain grasp on her attention, her absorption. 
What she prized as of infinite moment was absolutely 
valueless to him. What he thought of himself, how 
he never invaded the smallest comfort of the small- 
est insect, was a happiness to him, which no 
amount of satisfied ambition equaled. All the same, 
he wished he was ambitious for her sake, he wished 
for great wealth to shower material comforts on her. 


Dorothy Delafield. 167 

Now and then he would make the effort for days 
together to grow into the likeness of a sordid, 
money-making man, and Mrs. Delafield would flash 
the most intoxicating encouragement from her 
grand eyes. But some poor drunkard, or forsaken 
wife, or crippled child, would test the new hardness 
and self-seeking, and then Robert would defeat 
himself. At such times Mrs. Delafield would sit 
over her fire, or her Bible, weeping, and declaring 
that they would always be poor. But Robert, hav- 
ing passed through the “ eye of a needle,” had 
taken a long step heavenward. 

These frictions of character upon character ! How 
easy life would become if we neither hated much 
nor loved much. But what a gray atmosphere 
would prevade our sky if such were the case. 

Dorothy, too, in these months of quietness, had 
her old conceptions of a great future — even of an 
elegant woman. She was, however, beginning to 
be aware that she should never have time to be- 
come such a woman. Time grew to be a more and 
more important factor. Ellice was right about the 
valuable quality in Dorothy’s work. It had not 
enlarged her mind, but it had torn down a great 
many useless partitions of notions and prejudices, 
and the young, fresh thought was ready to be 
enlarged. 

She dropped the book she was studying, and 
looked out over the mill hollow, suggested only 
from the little parlor window by the nearer and the 
farther trees, rising like columns of soldiers in brill- 
iant yellow and red outline ; beyond was the deep, 
pale blue of the sunset sky, and along the horizon 


Dorothy Delafield. 


1 68 

bands of green, mottled with flashes of red and pur- 
ple. Over the little door-yard the uncut grass had 
that vivid translucent greenness which indicates 
previous cold nights. All through it stood the dan- 
delions, with their white, frail tops, looking like the 
tombstones of the departed summer. Dorothy 
clasped her arms behind her, and stood there think- 
ing. She, too, had come to a time when she had 
a burning desire to leave Quincy. She wanted to 
study with more result; she wanted to see the 
world for herself. It was several weeks since she 
had heard from Ellice, and she wondered whether 
Ellice had forgotten her. She had made one visit 
to Judge Pettibone’s, and she was wishing she could 
make another. 

Dorothy liked it there. The great square rooms, 
the broad windows, the roomy fire-places, the fam- 
ily portraits, the elegantly appointed table, the fine 
drives, all suited her taste. 

As she stood wishing and hoping, Joe broke the 
perfect solitude of the scene by coming into sight, 
brandishing a letter, which Dorothy knew, from the 
shape of the envelope, was from Ellice. He pulled 
another into view, with print on one end, as he 
sprang on to the stoop, and in another instant stood 
before his sister, his bold little front thrust forward, 
two letters behind him, and exclaimed, 

“ Right or left ! ” 

After much guessing, changing, and coaxing, 
Dorothy got her letter, and read, with dancing eyes 
and beating heart, a renewal of the request Ellice 
had made in the spring. 

Mr. Delafield, with whom Joe never trifled, soon 


Dorothy Delafield. 169 

finished his letter, and he watched his daughter as 
she read hers. It made him sad to see the joy in 
her face. Mrs. Delafield exulted in her new rest- 
lessness. 

“ Is yours from Judge Pettiborne ? ” said Dorothy, 
at length, looking up with a long sigh of content- 
ment. 

“ Yes.” 

“ Does he want me to come ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ May I go ? ” and Dorothy sprang to her father. 

“ Do you want to go ? ” 

Robert looked wistfully into her upturned face. 

“ O, I do ! ” and Dorothy threw her arms about 
his neck, and kissed his cheeks and eyes and 
forehead. 

“ I shall come back often, so often ; every Sun- 
day. I mustn’t disappoint mamma, father ; ” and 
Dorothy put her hands on his shoulders and stood 
away from him. “You don’t think your Dorothy 
wants to leave you ! ” 

Robert took her in his arms then, with a still, 
close, strong hug. “ It breaks my heart to let you 
go, daughter; but it is right.” 

It almost broke Dorothy’s heart then to look at 
the hard lines that settled about those beloved eyes. 
Notwithstanding, her young heart was exulting in 
its large prospects, away beyond were the glad 
times of their reunion, and all the sky of that radi- 
ant future was filled with unbroken sunshine. 

It was Robert himself who was to drive Dorothy 
to Judge Pettibone’s. 

They started one gray November morning. 


70 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Elizabeth stood on the little stoop, overwhelmed 
with grief, her sobs coming with a dry, choking 
sound, her little white apron at her eyes. Joe stood 
with his hands in his pockets, his round face grim, 
as if he were the county sheriff. Mrs. Delafield 
lingered beside the carriage, tucking Dorothy in 
here and there, her face suffused with pride and 
tenderness. She was too well satisfied to feel un- 
happy now. But when the mountain winds swept 
round the little house at night, and the winter 
storms beat day and night, as they often did, there 
was a tugging at her heart, like a hand there, grasp- 
ing and tearing, till she felt she must strangle. All 
the same, that little black buggy went on its way 
down the street, over the Speedaway, around the 
corner, on — on — to a new life for Dorothy. 



Dorothy Delafield. 


171 


©HAPmsi^ III. 



OBERT was in no haste to make the drive 


shorter than necessary between Quincy and 
Judge Pettibone’s. Dorothy, on the other hand, 
felt a certain thrill of gladness as the last house of 
the straggling little town was passed, and they 
bowled along over the smooth frozen ground. She 
was in a mood to sever Quincy and her future. 
Girl-like, she did not comprehend that the threads 
of feeling, thought, and habit woven in that town 
into her very being, would be reins to draw her this 
way and that often and often when her ambition, 
her perception of congruities, her actual tastes 
would have led her in other directions. It was such 
an easy thing to go home ; such an easy thing for 
home to come to her ; and so she exulted in all the 
promised novelty of the new life. 

Robert knew what a fixed spot home is. We 
leave home. If we stay away too long, that to 
which we return is not the home of our ideal. We 
make new homes, trying to put the ideal into them, 
and still that inner something which was the sanct- 
uary of childhood, that place where neither care 
nor abiding sorrow lurked, is never again sheltering 
arms, if we deliberately choose some other spot as 
better or larger than the home of our childhood. 

Dorothy’s eyes were the first to discover the sub- 
stantial brick walls of the Pettibone homestead, as 


172 


Dorothy Delafield. 


their horse climbed the steep hill on the hither side 
of the Old Quincy valley. 

“ There it is, father ! there is Judge Pettibone’s? 
This is a beautiful valley, so rich ; see how well- 
kept the fences are ; what crops of corn, so different 
from our little straggling patches on the mountain 
side.” 

“You cannot see as far ; there is not a hill to be 
seen on three sides of the judge’s place. Do you 
remember, Dorothy, our tramps up the lane, and 
over the woody sides of Mount Zoar; how we en- 
joyed the keen biting air, and all those miles of 
country far and wide, and we so above it all ? ” 

“Yes, father, and you said it was like being on 
the way to heaven — and so it was,” and the high 
sweet look that so often mantled Dorothy’s face 
came back to it and then flitted away. “ But if 
you want to drive, these are the roads ; they con- 
tinue all the way to New York. Ellice says we 
will drive down there occasionally. Wont that be 
nice?” and Dorothy clasped her hands around 
her father’s arm, and laid her head against his 
shoulder. 

How Robert longed to keep her there forever. 
A sudden impulse seized him to turn round and 
take her home, and write to Judge Pettibone that 
the sweet flower of his own raising could not be 
transplanted. But he did not. We never do follow 
these fierce, hungry impulses. 

The horse jogged on, a deep silence between the 
two, which Robert broke with a half sigh, as they 
came opposite the well-kept fences that bounded 
Judge Pettibone’s estate. 


Dorothy Delafield. 173 

“ Dorothy, don’t let the comfort and ease and 
elegance smother you.” 

Dorothy looked at her father half alarmed, for, 
after all, her central thought was in some way to 
draw nearer to the accomplishment of her mother’s 
hopes. 

“ O, father, if I thought they would do that ! But 
I shall get used to the change, and we are to study 
so hard ; trust your Dorothy to do that.” 

“ Don’t get unused to your father’s home, Dor- 
othy.” Robert looked at her with such absolute 
longing and love, that Dorothy’s eyes became two 
copious fountains. With the tears streaming, but 
with a smile that was irresistible in its assurance, 
she said, 

“ Let my right hand forget her cunning first, and 
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; forget 
the home where you and mother are! O, father!” 

Robert gave her hand a close grasp, as he reined 
his horse into the avenue that led to the new home. 

“ I don’t believe you could go very far away from 
us without running all the way to get back.” 

And then he laughed, and Dorothy laughed to see 
herself in such a plight. So altogether, when they 
reached the house, they looked as calm and prosaic 
as was necessary to cover the loneliness of the 
father, and the grand expectations of the daughter. 

Judge Pettibone and Nathan and Ellice were all 
there to receive them. Nathan was in his uniform, 
as captain of a volunteer company which he had 
raised in his own neighborhood, and Dorothy 
thought how well the blue-gray dress set off the 
large clear eyes and colorless complexion. Nathan’s 


174 


Dorothy Delafield. 


smile was a little quizzical as Ellice divested Dor- 
othy of the long, loose cloak which enveloped her, 
and revealed th« erect proud figure in a steel-colored 
dress of shining alpaca, its long straight skirt ter- 
minated by one of Miss Dainty’s most correct 
knife pleetin’s.” But he thought he had never 
seen a prettier and a rounder and a whiter throat 
than the one before him, encircled with the very 
narrow band of white linen, which was then the 
fashion, or a more shapely hand than the one ex- 
tended to him with its mottled pink palm and firm 
quick grasp. 

Robert was a silent and proud spectator of the 
welcome his girl received. But the consciousness 
of how well all these bright and handsome surround- 
ings seemed to fit Dorothy, and of his inability to 
provide them for this jewel of his heart, rendered 
him awkward. He had never wanted them him- 
self. But what if he lost his daughter through a 
lack of these things? He felt a sudden angry con- 
tempt for himself that he had not, for the sake of 
his children, better adjusted himself to the coarser 
things of existence. He moved toward the door, 
but with such a regard in his eyes for Dorothy, that 
Judge Pettibone measured 'her value by this power 
she must have with her father. He allowed Mr. 
Delafield to withdraw without much urging to stay, 
and Dorothy followed him into the wide, low hall. 
He stopped as soon as they were beyond the sight 
of the others, took Dorothy in his arms and kissed 
her. She felt the tremble all through his slight 
frame. Then he put her away from him with “ Be 
a good girl, Dorothy,” and walked down the hall 


Dorothy Delafield. 


175 


with his head a little bent, not even pausing to look 
back as he opened the door and passed out. Dor- 
othy stood still, listening to the momentary grind 
of the wheels as he turned his horse, and then fled 
up the stairs to Ellice’s room, and longed, as she had 
never longed before, for that little chamber in de- 
spised Quincy. 

There was nothing about the Pettibone mansion 
to suggest either romance or sorrow. 

It was a large, square house, with a gambrel roof, 
a pattern of many scattered through the middle 
States. There was the spacious, breezy hall, the 
doors of which stood open at either end all summer. 
On either side were immense rooms, those on the 
east used for parlor and dining-room, and the one 
on the west a library. The hall, too, for that mat- 
ter was part library, for Judge Pettibone had a 
mania for books. 

On the second story the central space was occu- 
pied by a large square hall. Around it ran a gal- 
lery, out of which opened two or three unused 
rooms, and on the floor above the attics, Ellice’s 
favorite resort on rainy days. This hall was lighted 
from the roof, and was surrounded on three sides 
by the family sleeping rooms, while the fourth re- 
vealed the wide, low staircase, with its easy land- 
ings. 

Dorothy’s room communicated with Ellice’s, and 
was the full glory to her poetic mind of what the 
gay wall paper on her chamber at home had faintly 
typified. The carpet was a confused blending of 
soft pink and gray, with a wide sumptuous border 
of roses, green leaves, and mosses. The fire-place 


76 


Dorothy Delafield. 


was set with tiles in pink and gray, representative 
of Noah’s history. The two broad windows, with 
their high white wainscotings, were draped with fine 
muslin embroidery. The bed of solid St. Domingo 
mahogany, with its low rolling foot board and head 
board ; the high brass-knobbed bureau, with its little 
square glass ; the elegant cheval glass in the corner, 
which for days made Dorothy more conscious of her 
feet and skirts than face ; the easy-chairs and 
lounge, all these, while satisfying her taste and 
pleasing her vanity, brought her to that very state 
that Robert had feared. She felt so smothered 
that night after night the fine linen on which she 
reposed was wet with her tears, and she fell asleep, 
dreaming of taking the windy walks over the breezy 
hill-tops of Quincy, her hand clasped in that of her 
father, her talk on celestial homes not made with 
hands. But as Dorothy also said, in time she be- 
came used to the luxury. 



Dorothy Delafield. 


177 


©HAPiFB^ ly. 



LLICE spent the hours before dinner in giving 


£j Dorothy a vivid description of all the plans 
which she and her father had perfected. Madame 
Rameau had arrived the day before, and was to be 
their companion and teacher. Then a professor 
was to come from New York twice a week to in- 
struct them in music, and “ What do you think, 
Dorothy ? my father says that if he finds you apt, 
/le will teach you your Latin and Greek.” 

When they went to dinner she met Madame 
Rameau, who was a blonde lady, with white hair and 
a youthful face. She was very vivacious, and 
Dorothy, with that shrewd, watchful perception 
which a solitary life and little merely social conver- 
sation engenders, found herself wondering how 
Madame Rameau could use so many words, and 
take so much time in saying so little. Nevertheless 
Dorothy was charmed with the succession of dim- 
ples and smiles that played over her smooth, rosy 
face, with the droop of her symmetrical head to one 
side, as she would insert a French word with a vol- 
ume of meaning which her eyes and her flexible 
little smile half translated. She was constantly 
wishing to be excused for small faults, which no 
one but herself saw she had committed. She talked 
a great deal about les propriiteSy le savoir faire^ 
glanced at the butler and maids always as if she had 
suddenly pounced upon petty conspiracies, and al- 

12 


178 


Dorothy Delafield. 


together in a half-day made a general impression of 
her entire capacity to be that curious mixture of old 
youthfulness and shrewd management — a chaperone. 

Nathan sat on one side of the great library fire 
that first evening, while Madame Rameau and the 
two girls made a charming group at the other. 
Madame Rameau wore a soft clinging dress of dark 
blue, whose long, sweeping folds outlined the gen- 
erous and noble proportions of her figure. Dorothy 
sat close beside madame, who held her hand, caress- 
irig it gently, asking first one girl and then the 
other questions about her life, or told little anec- 
dotes which their replies suggested. She told a 
story well, and all her stories were about a life 
that Dorothy knew little of, and which had far 
more substantial splendor than her loving heart 
and ardent imagination would ever find realized. 

Nathan never talked, as Ellice had said. He had 
a suggestive presence, and its possession had made 
him lazy. Madame’s eyes frequently appealed to 
him, though her questions, her conversation, were 
addressed to the girls. “ Poor little bird ! ” was his 
thought, as he looked at Dorothy, whose artless 
face shone with undisguised admiration for this 
lady, who was so very different from any one she 
had ever known. Miss Priscilla had seen the same 
things, no doubt, but Miss Priscilla and madame 
were not alike. 

As for Ellice, she enjoyed the consciousness of 
having brought two such elements into the home, 
for madame had been Ellice’s choice of a compan- 
ion, rather than her father’s. 

Judge Pettibone did not question the lady’s ac- 


Dorothy Delafield^ 


179 


complishments, all these were backed by years of 
well-known success. But he had introduced Doro- 
thy into the home because of her strength and 
purity and seriousness, and a lady like this Madame 
Rameau seemed a flat contradiction of terms. 
There was something about her which he did not 
like, but for that matter so there was about all these 
mysterious French women, with their elegant man- 
ners and their convenient principles, and their his- 
tory, whose beginning was always left untold. Thus 
it was, that after seeing a score he allowed himself, 
from sheer weariness and a sort of apathy about 
the future, which his children shared with him, to 
make a decision rather than prolong the search. 

In a few days a great gulf seemed to Dorothy to 
separate her past from her present life. Time flew, 
the lessons were many and long, but fresh minds 
and strong bodies responded to the tasks, and 
madame had no cause to complain of dull pupils. 
While the mood was on her Ellice rivaled Dorothy 
in her power to learn, and, indeed, possessed a quick- 
ness which Dorothy lacked, with all her versatility. 

Thus matters went on for two or three weeks, 
the acquaintance of all ripening into a pleasant 
familiarity. Dorothy had lost her timidity with 
the judge, and felt a sort of protection from the 
shafts of Ellice’s wit, for while laughing at and ad- 
miring his daughter, he unconsciously shielded the 
young girl at his side. Her directness, her trustful- 
ness, which had never yet received a shock, her 
enthusiastic belief in the goodness and truthfulness 
of every body, appealed strongly to his fatherhood. 

Madame often laughed after Dorothy had spoken. 


8o 


Dorothy Delafield. 


an amused silvery little laugh ; she sometimes laid 
her hand suddenly on Dorothy’s and patted it, and 
said, “ Tres bieriy mon enfant^' as if Dorothy had done 
some wise thing after ^ue premeditation. Nathan 
looked across the table with a frown, one morning, 
after an episode of this kind, but madame answered 
the look with. 

She really is what a French girl appears to be.” 

“ Is that your honest opinion, madame?” 

Her eyelids contracted^ momentarily, then she 
faintly smiled while giving Nathan a long, pene- 
trating look, and shook her head affirmatively. 
Dorothy half turned in her chair, a hot flush rose 
to her temples, suffused her whole face and neck, 
and glowed in her eyes as she looked at Madame 
Rameau. Then the proud head was thrown back, 
she shrank away instinctively from her companion, 
and gave Judge Pettibone and Nathan a flashing 
look of appeal. What good man ever challenged 
thus for protection fails to respond ? Dorothy made 
two partisans and one enemy in that minute. Ellice 
saw it all, understood it all, and told Nathan 
shortly after breakfast that the fun had begun. 

“ It’s a shame, Ellice, to bring a girl like Dorothy 
Delafield under such a woman’s influence. She 
will sap all her sweetness. Why didn’t you say 
something?” 

“ How is Dorothy to get along in the world if she 
stays as she is ? She will be knocked at every turn. 
It’s nonsense for a girl to believe every body, as Dor- 
othy does ; as madame says, it’s positively rustic.” 

“As madame says?” and Nathan, in his earnest- 
ness, laid his hand on Ellice’s shoulder. 


Dorothy Delafield. i8i 

“ Are you in love with Dorothy, Nathan ? ” 

“ Does madame say that, too ? ” 

“ O, madame seldom says ; but madame knows 
and insinuates.” 

“ Then she has a mean nature.” 

“ O, Nathan, you are as simple as Dorothy. Is 
one to tell all she sees to every body? No one 
could be more Dorothy’s friend than I am. I don’t 
want her to lose what you call her sweetness, but 
what madame and I call her ignorance ; why, the 
sooner she learns to conceal that the better. Am I 
not as sweet as Dorothy?” Ellice’s brown eyes 
twinkled, and her broad handsome shoulders shook 
at the idea. If Dorothy goes on blundering forth 
her pastoral revelations as she does, what may be 
simplicity now will soon be vanity or design.” 
Ellice’s lips came together as she continued, 

“ In asking Dorothy to come here I did not agree 
to think she was an angel. She does not think I am 
one. You should hear the long lectures she gives 
me at night. She makes me kneel down beside her, 
and then she prays for me ! I try to feel good ; I 
do, Nathan.” 

“ I hope you do, Ellice ; ” and Nathan, who knew 
the view of true nobility which lay in his sister’s 
nature side by side with her indolence and selfish 
love of present well-being, said, most gently, “ If 
you are good, Ellice, you will protect Dorothy from 
that woman. For some reason or other, Dorothy 
is in her way.” 

“ That makes an interesting complication, doesn’t 
it? This old sunny house doesn’t suggest plots, 
does it? What do you suppose madame wants ? ” 


i82 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ O, many things. But one thing I am convinced 
she does not want, and that is a communicative and 
uncomfortably truthfuj_ person around. You and 
father are simpler than Dorothy has shown herself, 
if you suppose Madame Rameau will pass a whole 
winter in a country house with no other object in 
view than a livelihood. I made up my mind to 
that the first evening we spent in the library." 

Ellice looked at Nathan thoughtfully. 

“ I do not see why she should not ; it is an ele- 
gant home, and she has all the rights of a home. 
Then see the provision father has made for our en- 
tertainment in New York, all the operas and plays 
and concerts." 

“ And the society of two unsophisticated young 
girls." 

“What would you have me do, Nathan? We 
have engaged madame for the winter." 

“ Madame is doubtless well enough, kept at a safe 
distance. But take care of Dorothy. I would trust 
you and madame against each other, only don’t 
have any secrets with her. Listen to hers, for I 
warrant she will have a score.” 

Ellice colored slightly, and tossed her head. 

“ I wish I had a past to have secrets about ; 
hum, hum," and Ellice clasped her hands above her 
head as she yawned. “ This study, study, study, is 
very prosaic. If I didn’t think my stock of knowl- 
edge disgracefully small, I would never keep it up 
a whole winter." 

“ Are you getting tired of Dorothy in a month ? ’’ 

“ No ; ’’ and Ellice spoke energetically. “I do 
not believe I shall ever get tired of Dorothy; I’m 


Dorothy Delafield. 


183 

constant after my fashion,” and Ellice laughed as 
Nathan shook his head. ‘‘ I like to live with good- 
ness so long as it doesn’t coerce me. Dorothy has 
one of those gentle clear little souls that dreads to 
see wrong anywhere, even in me ; but if she will 
only believe in me, I shall be fair with her and never 
do any thing very wrong. I’ll take good care of 
her,” and Ellice stepped backward out of the room, 
leaving Nathan thinking over the illy assorted house- 
hold his departure for Washington the next day 
would leave behind. 

Judge Pettibone saw no reason to suppose the 
girls were not exceptionally well provided for for the 
winter. Ellice was ransacking the cyclopaedias and 
dictionaries as she had never done before. School- 
girl talks on literature at the table were better than 
serious conversation on his part. Then Judge Pet- 
tibone was away days at a time, first, because of 
Nathan’s preparations, and then with a long legal 
case. Though he estimated Madame Rameau as a 
shrewd, worldly woman, her very worldliness he 
felt would surround the young ladies with all neces- 
sary conveniences, and her advice, if . not tending 
toward moral elevation, would help them in social 
ways. First of all he wanted Ellice to provide 
more mental resources for herself than she had 
hitherto done ; if she did this, and softened her 
brusque ways a little, in another winter she could 
preside at his table when he gave dinners, and be 
more his companion. Dorothy was a mental recre- 
ation for him, and besides, such was his admiration 
for the rectitude of her father’s character that he 
felt she was a kind of moral background for Ellice, 


1 84 Dorothy Delafield. 

Like many another father he did not wish his daugh- 
ter’s views on any subject to be rigid and unyielding, 
but he found himself every now and then alarmed 
because Ellice had no fixed views of any kind. 

So here was Dorothy, in her fine new home at 
seventeen years of age, left quite alone to trim her 
little lamp and let its rays shine out as best they 
could. She astonished Madame Rameau with her 
avidity and quickness. Judge Pettibone liked to 
see her fair head bending over the books, her color 
coming and going, the strong light in her clear eyes 
when he questioned her about what she was doing. 
With Nathan’s departure, and more leisure for him- 
self, he quite anticipated an hour or two alone oc- 
casionally with a cultivated girl. He smiled at him- 
self for his taste. How such a girl would have 
palled upon him when he was Nathan’s age. Ellice 
was a girl after the heart of his youth. But Doro- 
thy was a cool little fountain that it was pleasant 
to pause beside in one’s middle life. 

While Nathan stood before the library fire one 
afternoon, his arms folded behind him, his eyes riv- 
eted on the flames, the door opened and Dorothy 
entered. Nathan turned as she was about to with- 
draw and said, 

“ Wont you come here, Dorothy?” 

As he did so he drew a large chair up to one 
corner of the fire-place, and looked at Dorothy with 
such a kindly inviting gaze that she did as he asked, 
although it was the first time she had ever been 
alone with him. He put a chair in the opposite 
corner for himself, and sitting down leisurely looked 
across at her and smiled, as if that were all he 


Dorothy Delafield. 


185 


wanted. Dorothy enjoyed the atmosphere Nathan 
threw about himself. She had never heard him ex- 
press an opinion unqualifiedly on any thing, and to 
a girl who had been brought up on opinions, this 
ought to have been fatal to her respect for him. 
He very frequently said “ Yes ” to her often-repeated 
and energetic “ Don’t you think so ? ” But when 
he did, he gazed right into her eyes with an ex- 
pression of affection and kindliness together that 
made Dorothy think of the great St. Bernard that 
lay curled beside the judge at breakfast. She could 
never quite tell whether he idly agreed with her, or 
whether she had chanced to utter one of his own 
opinions so perfectly that there was nothing more 
to be said. The truth of the matter was that every 
body talked to Nathan. He had friends among all 
classes, and carried his indolent dignity into all 
places and before every body. He had his strong 
likes and dislikes as well as Ellice ; but Ellice always 
instantly acted on hers, while Nathan nursed his, 
turned them over and idly waited and watched in 
perfect silence to see whether he was right or wrong. 
He loved the free generous life they lived. He 
kept the judge’s accounts, for which he had a real 
fondness. He discussed the daily news, but never 
got excited over it. He loved Ellice fervently, but 
setting this love aside no other had ruffled the calm- 
ness of his nature. Ellice was astonished to see the 
open and quiet interest he took in Dorothy. “ The 
first girl he had ever exchanged any conversation 
with,” she said over and over to madame in their 
numerous and long talks together. Leau tran- 
quille^'' was all madame ever replied. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


1 86 

On this last afternoon at home, with Ellice and 
his father away for an hour or two to make final 
purchases for his comfort, the air so still and clear 
and cold outside, the sunlight falling in long pale 
streaks across the carpet, it was delightful to sit 
looking at this expectant ingenuous young face. 
Nathan thought he had never seen one so pretty 
and so good. The burning logs cast jets of radi- 
ance over Dorothy’s brown dress and hair, touching 
both with a golden glimmer. Nathan thought 
again of Mona Lisa. He did not believe this young 
girl showed all she could be on the surface. He 
enjoyed thinking she was predestined to have many 
cross purposes in her life. 

The door opened again noiselessly, and rested ajar 
a moment. Nathan caught the rustle of madame’s 
black silk as it closed. Five minutes later he 
saw her walking back and forth on the broad 
piazza that bounded three sides of the house, her 
head enswathed in a fleecy white covering, a heavy 
shawl wrapped around her. Nathan now began to 
tell Dorothy of his company, whither they were to 
go ; how he expected to bear the hardships of the 
winter, and talked so continuously that Dorothy 
for the first time had nothing to do but to listen. 

If she had wanted to do so, she could not have 
withdrawn. Madame presently left the piazza and 
came in to get warm. Her handsome face was in a 
fine glow. She held out her plump white hands to 
the fire as she glanced at Dorothy, and said, 

“ How flushed your cheeks are, cJier enfant ; you 
are sitting too near the fire.” 

“You hardly feel the heat in these corners. 


Dorothy Delafield. 187 

madame, or I would offer you mine,” said Nathan, 
as he placed a chair for her in front of the fire. 

“ Let me try yours,” and madame sank into the 
one Nathan had momentarily left, and began re- 
moving her wraps. 

“ If Dorothy would be so very kind as to go up 
stairs for my new novel, I think I would like to sit 
here for an hour,” and she looked at Nathan as 
though this was the pleasantest information possible 
for him. 

Dorothy sprang to her feet and, after listening to 
an elaborate explanation as to just where the book 
was, left the room, while Nathan remained standing 
before the fire. 

“ What a sweet girl Miss Dorothy is ! ” and 
madame’s eyes invited confidence. “Your sister 
tells me you have named her Mona Lisa.” 

Nathan shrugged his shoulders. 

“ What a mixture of innocence and subtlety there 
is in Mona Lisa’s face, is there not, madame? If I 
should venture to analyze her expression, I should 
say that added to great purity of nature was added 
great penetration of character. Mona Lisa looks 
as though she could keep the secrets of other peo- 
ple and her own, too.” 

Madame’s eyebrows straightened a little. 

“ Surely you do not read all this in a young girl’s 
face; a child of nature like this one has no past.” 

“ But she can have a future,” said Nathan, and 
then, as Dorothy entered the room, he continued, 
“ How would you like a sleigh-ride this evening, 
madame ; it will be a fine night and the sleighing is 
excellent ? ” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


1 88 

“ Ah, thank you ; I have been longing for one 
ever since the snow cain^ There will be places for 
Judge Pettibone and your sister if I go ? And shall 
we have to leave Dorothy at home?” Madame 
made a very little face and said, “ Will it disappoint 
you much ? ” 

Now madame knew that it would, and she en- 
joyed Dorothy’s awkward indecision, who finally 
found words to answer, with a little tremulous note 
in her voice, 

“ I can go another time, madame. Ellice has 
promised me many rides.” 

“ We will not go at all, Dorothy, unless you ac- 
company us ; that is understood. Father cannot 
go, and I want you to sit beside me and see me 
manage the horses. We will give madame and 
Ellice the snug back seat, but I will tuck you in 
well too, if you will trust yourself to me.” 

Dorothy’s face shone with pleasure as she told 
Nathan she would sit anywhere for the sake of the 
ride. 

“ Acknowledge Mr. Nathan’s attention more 
gracefully, my child ; you must drop your mountain 
gaucheries. 

Poor Dorothy did not know what gaucheries 
were, but something dreadful, she was sure, and she 
colored and stood still. 

“ Go up stairs, dear, and prepare your literature 
for to-morrow. You must study if you go out to- 
night. Excuse me for dismissing her,” madame 
said, deprecatingly ; “ but we must not tempt her 
into too much ease. She already has less inclina- 
tion, I fancy, for hard work.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 189 

I had not noticed it ; ” and Nathan bowed, and 
withdrew. 

The evening was fine. A round, white moon 
sailed high in the heavens. The low hills skirting 
the horizon met bands of pale sky that faded into a 
silvery, high arching blue. On every side, as far 
as the eye could see, the landscape shone. The 
still air was now and then broken by the jingle of 
bells. A frosty clearness prevaded the atmosphere. 
The large trees around the Pettibone mansion 
rose gray and skeleton-like, their myriad arms and 
fingers pointing upward to the sky, or downward, 
as if spreading hands of benediction over the earth. 
Dorothy breathed in all the wondrous beauty as 
she walked up and down the piazza, impatient to 
be off, and feeling like a Russian princess in a great 
fur wrap, which Ellice had exhumed from her mys- 
terious attic trunks. Pretty soon Nathan came out. 
Dorothy thought his eyes were a piece with the 
heavens as he overtook her. 

“ Take my arm. Miss Dorothy, and we will walk 
ourselves into a glow while waiting for the horses.” 

Dorothy had never before had quite such a walk. 
Nathan’s strong arm seemed to lift her from her 
feet. They went round and round, and Nathan 
once and a while looked on her face in its white 
hood, and thought it as pure as the snow. 

“ Will you sit by me on the front seat. Miss 
Dorothy ? ” 

This deference, this distant nearness between 
them ! Dorothy was in a dreamy maze, and fresh 
as she was from reading Spencer, she half expected 
to see some gnome or fairy enliven the scene, and 


Dorothy Delafield. 


190 

address them in silvery cadences. But, instead, 
madame and Ellice sallied forth, and just then the 
sleigh, with the high rounded back of those days^ 
swept round the house, drawn by the spirited black 
horses that Ellice had driven on the night of the 
accident. 

Madame Rameau looked very handsome, muffled 
though she was. Nathan was about to place her 
on the back seat, when she cried, 

“ Ah, let me sit with you ; I must sit where I 
can enjoy the motion. I am sure Ellice will yield 
her place to me once." 

“ That is not my place this winter, not till my 
ankle is stronger,” said Ellice, as she sprang in be- 
hind. “ Here, madame, this is a snugger seat.” 

But madame’s face was wholly set toward the 
front seat, and Dorothy stood back a little in the 
snow, drawing her heavy cloak about her and feel- 
ing ashamed of herself because of her preference to 
ride with Nathan, when it was Ellice who had 
brought all these good things to her. With these 
thoughts, she exclaimed, 

“ I would enjoy the back seat, Mr. Nathan ! ” 

Her face was rueful as Nathan looked at her, 
half-provoked for an instant that she relinquished 
her right so easily, and the next, charmed with her 
simplicity. 

“ But you accepted the seat beside me, and I 
will not let you excuse yourself. Madame is only 
jesting. When one reaches madame’s age, one 
wants the shelter of the back seat,” and Nathan 
smiled good-naturedly to Madame Rameau, as if 
they perfectly understood each other. 


Dorothy Delafield. 191 

“ Why, yes,” said madame, seeing that nothing 
remained but to accept the situation. ‘‘ I really 
thought the young ladies would prefer to be to- 
gether.” 

So Nathan tucked her in deferentially, and then 
assisted Dorothy. 

Away sped the horses through the gates, their 
hoofs cutting into the hard snow with a little click, 
almost drowned by the jingle of the bells. The 
frosty air against her heated cheeks, and Nathan’s 
masterful control of the horses as they swept across 
the valley, made Dorothy feel as though she were 
flying through the air. 

Nathan would not tell her where they were going, 
declaring that the ride was his ; but when they went 
under the overhanging trees that skirted either side 
of the long hills that led down into the old Quincy 
hollow, Dorothy exclaimed, with such heart-felt 
satisfaction, “You are going to Quincy!” that 
Nathan would have kept them out all night to 
please her. 

“Shall we pass Miss Dorothy’s little home?” 
asked madame, whose clear voice sent the words out 
into the night air, surcharged, as it seemed to Doro- 
thy’s sensitive ear, with cold condescension. Judge 
Pettibone, or Nathan, or Ellice did not make her con- 
scious of the difference between their circumstances 
and hers. But madame always made Dorothy feel as 
if she were on the edge of a social abyss, in which, 
sooner or later, she would be engulfed. 

Nathan touched first one horse and then the 
other with his whip, back and forth, and hummed, 
“ John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave.” 


192 


Dorothy Delafield. 


He turned once and looked steadily at Dorothy, 
and she, in her desire to know what he wanted, re- 
turned the gaze. Madame watched it from her fur- 
lined seat, and touched Ellice. 

“ What is it, madame ? ” said Ellice, whose strong 
nature constantly broke away from the net-work of 
espionage with which madame surrounded every 
one. 

“ That town on the hill-side ; it is quite Swiss.’* 

“ That is Quincy ! ” and Dorothy turned round, 
love and pride mingled in one. 

“ I thought you did not like Quincy,” said 
madame, with her pleased little laugh. “ Are you 
homesick ? ” 

“ I love it when I am away from it,” replied 
Dorothy, frankly. “ When I am away, the whole 
town seems like my own home.” 

“ Have you ever taken the drive on the other 
side of the mill hollow, through the woods? ” asked 
Nathan of Dorothy. He had no notion now of 
showing madame Dorothy’s shrine for her household 
gods, with Dorothy along. 

** Do take us there, Nathan,” said Ellice. 



Dorothy Delafield. 


193 


©HAPIIIBF5 U. 

M adame RAMEAU had a swollen face the 
morning after the sleigh-ride. Her joints 
were stiff. The heavy lines under her eyes, and 
that indefinable wrinkling of usually smooth skin 
on a mature face, when its possessor is ill, made her 
look old. She was not in a pleasant mood when 
she sat down alone with Dorothy to breakfast, for 
Ellice had locked herself in her room on Nathan’s 
departure. 

Dorothy felt awkward and self-conscious, for 
madame always so completely ignored her when 
they were alone, or asked her so many personal 
questions, with so much politeness, that she felt 
constrained, in courtesy, to answer them, although 
her mother-wit bade her do otherwise. 

Madame Rameau chatted constantly about 
Nathan, indulged in a little pleasantry, half-compli- 
mentary, half- cynical, about Ellice, and talked 
elaborately of all the poor people to whom Judge 
Pettibone was kind in such strange ways. 

But madame had mistaken Dorothy if she had 
expected her to join in a discussion of their mutual 
friends. Dorothy had lived her own life too entirely 
in the past to be interested in any small gossip. She 
had yet to learn to t^lk indefinitely around a subject ; 
but her intuitions, if slow, were correct, and her re- 
finement and sincerity generally led her to say what 
was right or keep silent. 

13 


194 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Poor Dorothy’s innocent vanity in thinking that 
she fitted into the new life was constantly being 
nipped by daily reproof from madame. Some of it 
helped her notwithstanding. She grew less dreamy, 
less absorbed in an imaginary world, much quicker 
in her perceptions, and dimly conscious of a side to 
her nature that had never been aroused. 

Just as soon as she could withdraw she excused 
herself to go to her studies, leaving madame to sit 
beside the open fire and toast her feet. 

As Dorothy was passing Ellice’s room the door 
opened on a crack. Ellice thrust out her face, 
swollen with weeping, and asked Dorothy to 
come in. 

“O, Dorothy, what shall I do? Nathan will be 
killed in his first battle, I am sure. I shall die, I 
know I shall.” 

Dorothy twined her strong arm about Ellice, and 
sat silently beside her, stroking her hair. 

Ellice liked Dorothy’s sympathetic touch, and in 
her variations from high animal spirits to fitful or 
moody despondency, always fell back upon Doro- 
thy’s mute attentions. 

“ Don’t let us have lessons to-day, Dorothy,” 
Ellice said, in a pause, after violent weeping. “ Go 
tell madame that I must be excused, and want you 
with me. Say I am sick,” she added, smiling 
momentarily. 

“ Don’t you think you could forget more easily if 
you studied ? ” asked Dorothy. “ We ought to be 
sure to do what is right in times like these, to do our 
duty ; ” and she looked at Ellice so earnestly that 
Ellice suddenly lost her temper. 


Dorothy Delafield. 195 

Well, go and study, then ; I did think you had 
a heart, Dorothy Delafield.” 

“ And so I have ! ” Dorothy threw her arms 
around Ellice again. “Ah, Ellice, I had always 
thought life a thorny pathway, but you have all 
made it so easy for me, that I feel as if I must at 
least study — that is what I came for, to study, and 
help you study.” 

“ If it doesn’t help me, you ought to feel willing 
to help me in some other way. Come, go tell 
madame I can’t come down, and then you and I 
will go up to the attic. I have never taken you 
there yet. It is a curiosity shop.” 

Dorothy went down stairs with some trepidation 
to give the message to Madame Rameau — for what- 
ever faults she may have had, madame performed 
her duties well as a teacher. Either she thought 
it not strange that Ellice was unwilling to study, or 
felt too unwell to make an effort, for she merely 
nodded her head when Dorothy delivered Ellice’s 
message. 

Dorothy ran up stairs with a buoyant step, for 
her conscience was so relieved by madame’s acqui- 
escence, that she entered with zest into the morn- 
ing’s diversion. 

She was quite awe-struck with the bunch of keys 
Ellice carried, and still more so with the mingled 
odor of must and camphor that prevaded the great 
darkened garret. 

“ I think father is very unkind to make me keep 
these trunks here. I think there ought to be a 
vault built for them ; but father says he wishes they 
would all burn up.” 


196 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ It would frighten me to look over the garments 
of my ancestors,” Dorothy said. Still she had great 
respect for the grand array of solemn receptacles 
that stood in a long, many-colored row. 

This pile of trunks was Ellice’s delight. She 
threw the blinds wide open, and the fresh morning 
light made the garret all at once commonplace. 

“ Let us darken it again,” Dorothy suggested. 
“ We can light these old candelabra, and pretend 
we are robbers who have broken in at night.” 

“ Horrible ! Next to father and Nathan come 
my beloved relics. I feel as though I owned Nathan, 
Dorothy; I would hate any woman Nathan should 
ever marry. He never shall marry ! ” and Ellice 
paused, her hand on the uplifted lid of a huge trunk, 
and stared at Dorothy with dilated eyes. 

She looked like a queen, with the light glinting 
her dark, wavy hair ; her long, graceful hand held 
out in menacing attitude, the folds of her purple 
dress falling without a furbelow from her slim 
waist. There was something grand in Ellice’s long 
lines. Dorothy almost adored her passionate, dark 
beauty, her childish recklessness, her willfulness, her 
constant vagaries, her bold, careless, defiant ways. 

There was not a room or a comfort about the 
house that Ellice did not offer to her friend with a 
heartiness that made Dorothy feel like a possessor. 
Two or three times she had purchased books for 
Dorothy, and these she had bought in stacks, and 
had stood watching Dorothy’s eager delight in un- 
wrapping them, with a benevolent, matronly smile, 
and an assumption of more to come in endless 
quantities. There was always this strange, lavish 


Dorothy Delafield. 


197 


giving, or a parsimonious withholding of something 
so small in itself that no other term than meanness 
would describe it. But, when Ellice would lay that 
long, soft, firm hand on Dorothy’s shoulder, or 
drawing her to her, as she would a dozen times a 
day, would kiss her and call her her faithful, noble 
Dorothy, Dorothy’s overflowing heart would 
almost deify her. 

As she gazed at Ellice, she wondered who, indeed, 
would dare wish to marry Nathan. Although it 
seemed an unnecessary thought in connection with 
him, she felt glad that no such thing need ever 
come between her and Ellice. 

“ I will show you my great grandmother’s things, 
on my mother’s side,” Ellice said, kneeling before a 
huge, hairy, brass-studded chest. “ I’m like her, 
they say, only her hair was auburn, and mine is 
black ; but it has the same crinkle in it. Her eyes 
were brown, too, and the white of one of them had 
a small black dot on it ; do you see that dot on 
mine?” and Ellice turned her face to the flame of 
Dorothy’s uplifted candle. “ Isn’t it mysterious 
that such a little thing as that should be repeated ? 
This is the cap she wore when she was seventy-six.” 
And Ellice held up a small cap, distended by her 
two hands, and looked at it with the admiring gaze 
of an antiquarian. “ See ! here are two little hollows 
her ears must have made, and here are the wrinkles 
left in these old satin strings. Isn’t it interesting ? ” 

Dorothy had an uncanny feeling, as if the spirit 
of some frail, white old lady was near. 

Ellice now plunged down to the bottom and drew 
out a package, which she began reverently to open. 


198 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ This was the shawl that her husband, my grand- 
father Eliphalet, brought from China. I never saw 
such a handsome one.” 

Ellice opened the long, silk, crepy folds, and dis- 
played the mass of embroidery and fringe. 

“ And this was her wedding-dress — she was as 
young as you, Dorothy, just seventeen. See these 
little sleeves and short waist. But notice the long 
skirt ; she was tally 

“ Did she live a happy life ? ” asked Dorothy. 

Ellice pursed her lips together. Her mouth 
looked small and solemn ; her chin, too, narrow 
and delicate for the rest of her face, had that 
wavering expression which made Dorothy always 
instinctively feel she was not quite sure which side 
Ellice would take in any matter, only always the 
one that suited her present mood. She stood now 
measuring the quaint dress against her own, and a 
look, half of fear and half of admiration, swept over 
her face as she said : 

“ She had a most unhappy life ; she ran away 
and was married, and after a long life of misery, 
was drowned at sea — washed up on the Jersey 
coast. Would you like to see the picture of the 
man who marred her life ? ” 

Ellice opened a box and took out a faded, pur- 
ple velvet case, and Dorothy, with all the vivid 
eagerness of her romantic nature, tried to read the 
story of fascination and wickedness Ellice told 
about the face before them. Ellice sat down on 
the floor, the open miniature in her lap, and looked 
up at Dorothy, still on her knees before her, a brass 
candle-stick in either hand. 


Dorothy Delafield. 199 

** I would like to have something like this in my 
life, something out of the commonplace. I would 
like to meet somebody who would chain me from 
the first time I saw him, and who would draw me 
on and on, and to whom I would have to give my- 
self up. I would like to plunge into an affection, a 
passion. I would not want to know of it till I was 
in it, and if I did, I would want to be swept right 
on. Really, that is the only pleasure one can^have 
with people. What do I care for any body whom I 
cannot drive, or who cannot drive me. I must be 
master, or have a master That is why I live so 
to myself here. All these people — tame girls — who 
are our neighbors, weary me to death. A ride over 
the hills and through the valleys on my faithful old 
Rex is better than a hundred tea-parties. I would 
not want to be shut out from them, to be socially 
ostracised. But if you do shock people a little, 
they may like you better. Every body is secretly 
tired of these things we do every day, over and 
over and over. O, dear me ! ” and Ellice rose to 
her feet and leaned far over the chest, as she put 
the things away. 

“ Now, if you will never tell — I wouldn’t tell 
Madame Rameau — I will show you something no 
one knows is here but father and myself — Nathan, 
of course. It is an old safe, approached through a 
chamber of horrors. No one would even suspect 
where it is. Thousands of dollars’ worth of old 
jewels in it,” whispered Ellice to Dorothy. “ See ! 
this queer little key opens it,” and Ellice exposed 
one on her bunch. “Go close the door, Dorothy, 
the wind must have blown it ajar.” 


200 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Dorothy was so impressed with the idea that it 
was night, instead of noon of a gray winter day, 
that she dreaded to close the door into the hall. 
But she started to do as she was bid, and her heart 
gave a great sickening throb, as she threw it open 
with a feeling as if she must do so. It seemed to 
her as if some one was just on the other side of it. 
Instead, a dozen yards off, she saw Madame 
Rameau coming up the stairs. She involuntarily 
gave a little scream. Madame looked surprised, 
and said, 

“ Then you are up here ! the housekeeper said I 
would probably find you in the attic. Is Miss 
Ellice with you ? " 

Madame looked straight at Dorothy with her 
limpid, clear gaze, and Dorothy, ashamed of her 
suspicion, said, 

“Yes;” and yet so hesitatingly, that madame 
paused outside the door and asked, 

“ Shall I intrude ? ” 

“ Come in, madame ! ” rang out Ellice’s voice. 
“ Come in ! We have been ransacking the garret.” 

Madame walked in, and made a great pretense of 
shuddering over the darkness, so that Ellice threw 
the outside blinds open, and flooded all her treas- 
ures with the outdoor light. 

“ See, it is a very musty, prosaic place, at noon ! ” 

Madame drew her white shawl around her 
shoulders, and surveyed the attic. 

There were old bureaus, chairs, and bedsteads, 
piled away in orderly confusion ; rolls of carpet in 
the dull faded patterns of by-gone times ; ornaments 
that told of crude colonial times ; pictures with 


Dorothy Delafield. 


201 


their faces turned against the wall, and others, dust- 
begrimmed, that looked pathetic in their long 
neglect. Then there was the orderly row of Ellice's 
trunks, about which madame asked a great many 
questions, and about whose contents Ellice replied 
in a half-mysterious, half-boastful way. 

Madame walked leisurely about, now picking up 
some cracked vase and holding it to the light, then 
looking for a minute into a musty book, unfingered 
for many a long year. She bent down and un- 
folded a large rug, thrown away in a dark corner, 
and at length paused, her attention suddenly ar- 
rested before a stiff, solid oak-table, whose precise 
geometrical carving appeared to interest her. 

*‘ You ought to have a handsome table like that 
down stairs.” 

“ There isn’t room for it,” replied Ellice. “ I 
don’t like it, either. Many a death-warrant was 
signed on it in revolutionary times.” 

“ And this ! ” and madame, pausing idly before 
an ungainly oak closet built against the wall, 
“ what is this ? ” 

“A closet filled with skeletons.” Ellice opened 
the door and showed the grim figures, hanging by 
hooks fastened in the skulls. “ These belonged to 
a doctor in the family, and they make the attic a 
terrible place at night for the servants.” 

Madame looked at Ellice with a slight expansion 
of the eyes, and said, “Foolish creatures!” She 
looked a long time at these figures, up and down, 
even swaying them back and forth a little, and 
philosophized, and quoted from the grave-digger in 
Hamlet. 


202 


Dorothy Delafield. 


There was a black curtain hanging behind them 
in the closet, and it stirred back and forth as a 
draft of wind came from the open door. 

“ Some one had an eye for effect to put such a 
draping behind these skeletons,” remarked 
madame. She turned away, but as she did so, said. 

Have I seen all ? ” 

“You have seen the outside; time will tell 
whether you will see the inside. I wish I could 
have as many lovers as I have coffers here, and 
that their fate depended on their wise choice of 
what this attic contains.” 

Ellice twirled the keys in her hand, and in an 
imperious way bade Dorothy close the blinds and 
extinguish the candles, declaring that the play was 
over for that day. 

Madame left them at the foot of the stairs to go 
to her own room. Dorothy took Ellice’s hand, 
drawing her friend in a coaxing way to her room 
which, despite its magnificence, had become her 
own, and essentially the dearest spot in the house. 
Dorothy’s manner always had a kind of benignant 
motherhood when she felt responsibility. She had 
a lonely foreboding of some lurking evil, and her in- 
tuitions connected it with this French woman, 
whose tortuous ways were quite at variance with 
the reckless straightforwardness of Ellice, or her 
half royal patronage and love of diversion. 

“ Ellice,” said Dorothy, after a long and thought- 
ful pause, “ do you like Madame Rameau? ” 

“ Why?” asked Ellice, surprised. 

“ Don’t you feel something wrong about her?’’ 

“ Feel! I never feel such things. You are super- 


Dorothy Delafield. 203 

stitious. Do feel any thing, my little saint?” 
and Ellice took Dorothy’s chin in her hand and 
turned the solemn, anxious face toward hers. 
“ Madame’s sophistications trouble your country 
honesty. I knew she thought there was something 
in that attic more than she saw. She has just a 
surplus of feminine curiosity — that is all. Trust me 
to tease it well. I never could show any mercy 
to a curious woman.” 

“ She is more than that,” said Dorothy. 

“ What do you know about her more than I do ? 
Has she told you any secrets? ” 

“ She never speaks to me, except to ask ques- 
tions ; but I think them all over when I am alone, 
and they worry me.” 

“ What does she ask ? ” inquired Ellice, growing 
curious, too. 

“ It is rather what she does not ask; she insinu- 
ates a lot of troublesome thoughts that I am 
ashamed to entertain. But I never have them ex- 
cept when I am with her. She implies that she 
and I have a little intrigue together, and that if I 
only would I could be mean — mean toward you. She 
has a poor opinion of me, Ellice.” 

“ Ah ! you are sensitive to every word and 
thought, Dorothy. Madame thinks you are slow 
and unresponsive, and does this to frighten you. 
It is her French art. She is cultivating you, Dorothy. 
Virgin soil ! ” and Ellice laughed a succession of rip- 
pling peals, and on Dorothy’s cheeks burned two 
red spots. 

There had been no such process with grand old 
Dr. Withers. Dorothy longed for the dingy room. 


204 


Dorothy Delafield. 


redolent with medicine, for the rush of the wind 
through the mill hollow, the lonely return home, 
half-walk, half-run, under the somber, purple even- 
ing sky. At seventeen she found herself wishing 
she were young again. This first taste of a broader 
life sent no fresher blood coursing through her veins. 
Then, there was the grim square white church on 
the windy hill. This very evening there would be 
the weekly prayer-meeting. Dorothy would have 
surrendered the pink-room gladly, with all its 
charms, to sit in a corner of one of those long pews, 
and sing and think and pray herself loose from the 
snares of a polite formality, as taught by a woman 
whose word and smile she mistrusted. She won- 
dered how she could have thought madame such an 
angel of light. Poor Dorothy did not know how 
the petty slights she daily received had loosened 
the scales from her own eyes, and how Ellice’s re- 
mained tightly closed in the atmosphere of romance 
and adulation, with which madame surrounded her. 

The two girls sat together with the gray sky set- 
tling lower and lower, till it lightened with the 
scattering flakes of the approaching snow-storm, 
Ellice thinking how much Dorothy had to learn be- 
fore she would be at ease in her world, and Dorothy 
wondering why Ellice would refuse to realize what 
she felt with a dim, heavy foreboding. 

Underneath her silent criticism of Dorothy there 
lay, in Ellice’s changeful, capricious nature, a deep- 
ening affection for the young friend, whom impulse 
and fancy and a real need had brought into her 
life. Now and then she would sit looking at Doro- 
thy with the gaze of a scared bird, wistful, incred- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


205 


ulous, loving, while Dorothy would tell her how 
trivial she was, how reckless, how inevitably, if she 
kept sowing to the wind, she would reap the whirl- 
wind. 

“ I would rather reap a whirlwind, if it must be a 
wind,” she said to Dorothy, one night, as they sat 
in their dressing-gowns and slippers before the fire. 
“But what do I do that is so wrong, Dorothy.^ 
There is no one’s will to have but my own.” 

“ It is a good will, Ellice dear, so far as it goes, 
most of the time ; but it seems to me that you 
would choose it all the same if it were a bad one. 
You never give up what you really want, not even 
to Nathan^ or your father.” 

“ That is a family trait ; we all recognize it, and 
never quarrel over it. There is a little less comfort 
on the whole than there would be if one of us were 
self-sacrificing. But we none of us have any ambi- 
tion that way. You know the old saying, that if 
you please yourself, you please every body else. It 
was unmitigated selfishness bringing you here. You 
are like a ray of clear sunlight at noonday. I 
knew you would brighten this free old home for me. 
I knew I needed to study, and that just such a girl 
as you would lead me into the traces. All the same, 
I want you to seem so sweet and lovable to me, 
that I will study because I love you, not because 
you set me a good example.” 

“ And if you cease to love me, Ellice ? ” 

“ I should quarrel with you. A bitter quarrel it 
would be, too. You could not stay with me. It 
would not be a small quarrel. I would persecute 
you if I were set against you.” 


2o6 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Dorothy leaned over and raked the fire. She did 
not believe Ellice meant* what she said. Moreover, 
it took two to make a quarrel, and she knew she 
would never forsake Ellice. 

“ I shall always love you, Ellice,” said Dorothy, 
looking up after a little, her eyes shining through 
her tears. ^‘You could not persecute me away 
from you.” 

“Let us make a pledge, Dorothy. You admire 
this ring,” and she drew a clear, squarely cut sap- 
phire from her finger. “ This is yours so long as 
you remain my faithful friend. If ever I think you 
are not such a friend, I shall demand the ring.” 

“ I could not wear a ring that sometimes might 
seem to you like a reminder of unfaithfulness in 
me. If I take it, you must give it to me absolutely, 
and I shall wear it always, no matter what you be- 
lieve about me.” 

Ellice liked this firmness. So after a long look, 
at Dorothy, as if she could not quite grasp a con- 
viction of such constancy, she took Dorothy’s 
beautiful hand, and while slipping the ring on her 
finger, said, with sudden brightness and fierceness, 

“ I will wish it on with a blessing so long as you 
are faithful, and with a curse if you should ever be 
untrue.” 

“ I am your friend, Ellice, always,” said Dorothy. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


207 


(sHAPTBI^ UI. 



HE days after Nathan’s departure passed rap- 


idly away, with uniformity of occupation and 


few events to signalize their flight. When lessons 
were finished, while Madame Rameau either walked, 
or drove, or spent hours together with Ellice in dis- 
cussion of city gayeties, or dress, or lovers, Dorothy 
haunted the library, which came, by common con- 
sent, to be considered her special property during 
the long winter evenings. 

It was an immense apartment, flooded with south- 
western light during the fleeting afternoons, and 
rich in shadows and somber color after the lamps 
were lighted. One side was divided between the 
deep fire-place, with its almost perpetual fire of 
hickory logs, and two high mahogany book-cases. 
Its great length was terminated at either end by 
long windows, heavily draped in crimson, and 
Dorothy’s sumptuous taste reveled in the glory 
that interpenetrated these curtains when the sun- 
light intensified their rich hue, or the flames, spurt- 
ing in high jets, made them of manifold shades, 
each brighter than the other. Judge Pettibone 
had been much abroad in his earlier manhood, and 
the room gave evidence of a taste common enough 
nowadays, but then sufficiently unusual to give it 
peculiar individuality. Its polished floor was broken 
and subdued by rugs of all shapes and sizes, but in 
them all that dull bright red of Smyrna and Da- 


2o8 


Dorothy Delafield. 


ghestan prevailed with a sort of latent brightness, as 
if sometime the heat and glow of the fire would 
waken it into active being. The center of the floor 
was covered with one of these rugs, in which stood 
an ornately carved mahogany table, its legs termi- 
nating in brass claws, its top strewn with news- 
papers and reviews. Opposite the fire-place, and 
the cases I have mentioned, were similar cases, their 
continuous line relieved only by two doors of dark 
mahogany. The long sweep of the room was broken 
by two broad sofas, at such an angle that they com- 
manded the morning and the afternoon light. By 
either one was a small table and a revolving book- 
case, with writing materials and all the lighter lit- 
erature of the day at hand. Between the southern 
windows stood a squarely built towering desk, of 
the same elaborate carving as the central table, and 
open only when Judge Pettibone sat before it. 
The corners beside the fire-place were always filled 
with arm-chairs, capacious enough for many an 
afternoon nap. 

This was the room whose occupancy Dorothy 
chiefly shared with Giant, the tawny, shaggy St. 
Bernard, who, in the judge’s absence, attached him- 
self to her with a mute comradeship which she 
nourished into that intimate affection which some- 
times exists between animals and human beings 
when they are left much alone together. 

Ellice did not intend to leave her friend so much 
to herself these days; but there were times when 
the repose of Dorothy’s nature fretted her. 

“ Can you be real angry, passionately angry, Doro- 
thy? I don’t believe you can,” and Ellice sighed 


Dorothy Delafield. 


209 

an impatient, dissatisfied sigh, and sat down look- 
ing straight before her for a long time. 

“ It is no use, Dorothy ; there is something in 
this life that is stifling me. I wish I could go to 
the war. It is very different scouring the country 
without Nathan. We were always expecting to 
break our necks, even if we never did. Now, 
madame, you have to tuck her in and keep her so 
warm, and the horses must move at just such a 
pace. Riding with madame is as tame as this 
country life. I am dying for excitement." 

The time arrived when Judge Pettibone was ex- 
pected home any day. The month of his absence 
with Nathan at Washington had so thoroughly do- 
mesticated the new members of his household that 
madame especially had a sense of general uncom- 
fortableness as one does who has held the reins long 
enough not to relish giving them to another. 

She had an older force to reckon with in Judge 
Pettibone. There was a keenness of observation in 
the glance of his black eye and a force of will in 
his straight lip that Ellice did not possess. Influ- 
ence, either positive or negative, madame invariably 
exerted. She knew that she had to make Judge 
Pettibone either her friend or her foe. Better the 
former, for the present. Ingenuous and unsophisti- 
cated as Dorothy was, madame had fully estimated 
her unusual force of character, her calmness, and 
the impossibility of rousing the enthusiasm of her 
really ardent nature, except as her imagination 
could invest a person with ideal excellence. Doro- 
thy’s intuitions had been finer from the outset than 
she had supposed. She had thought that a little 
14 


210 


Dorothy Delafield. 


flattery, a touch of graciousness now and then, 
would keep spell-bound a young girl who would 
nestle up to her beauty and elegance, as Dorothy 
had done the first evening of her arrival. But 
Dorothy had expected the petting to come from the 
heart, and the graciousness to be madame’s vital 
atmosphere. She was too sensitive not to feel the 
mechanism of the finest social act, and when this 
was set going only for occasions she found herself 
first inwardly withdrawing from madame’s touch, 
and then viewing her words and conduct with that 
judicial censorship of a pure young girl, which is at 
once just and unjust to the object of criticism. 

Even in Milton’s conception of the fallen angels, 
there are moments in which there is an intrinsic ex- 
cellence in what they do ; they have their heavenly 
voices and their heavenly strength in hell also. To 
Dorothy, not only what madame did, but the way 
in which she did -it, was, after a time, altogether 
faulty ; and so, without a word exchanged on either 
side, each knew that there was no mercy to be ex- 
pected from the other. Dorothy’s whole nature 
was set in the line of right-doing and noble thought. 
Madame Rameau delighted in subterfuge, and look 
back as far as she could into her childhood, it had 
always seemed a little wiser to her never to tell the 
whole truth. She had lived long enough also to 
know the great value which sometimes attaches to 
a worthless person, provided the secrets of his life 
are held safely in his own grasp. 

Dorothy, communicative to a fault, needed some 
open loving ear into which to daily pour her hopes, 
her plans, her views. Her dignity was. her safe- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


21 I 


guard. Her confidant must not only be her equal, 
but be sympathetic. It did not require many days 
for madame to discover this weakness, and to feel 
that when she chose and as she chose, by working 
on Ellice’s curiosity, whom Dorothy trusted im- 
plicitly, that she could judge pretty thoroughly 
what attitude Dorothy might take in the future. 
For madame, as the reader has already surmised, 
had become an inmate of this hospitable and gra- 
cious home for a purpose other than teaching. She 
had hoped at first to be able to disaffect Ellice in 
her friendship for Dorothy, and thus cut short the 
young girl’s winter plans by making her feel like a 
dependent, and, in a fit of wounded pride, return 
home. But as open battle was never madame’s 
method, and as Dorothy’s power over Ellice’s reck- 
less but generous and appreciative nature remained 
strong, madame at length decided to ignore Doro- 
thy for the present, and trust to what Ellice’s grow- 
ing infatuation for herself would accomplish. 

Can any one tell where tact ends and deceit be- 
gins ? Can any one trace the boundary line between 
willfulness which is pure mischievousness, and will- 
fulness which has its selfish end invariably in view ? 
Can one define the fine discontent and restlessness 
of a high vitality, and that overwrought nervous 
restlessness that cries out for the same fresh air, 
change, and excitement that perfect health craves? 
No ; we all recognize the existence of conditions for 
which we can find no name ; we all live at one time 
or another under circumstances whose outward 
seeming wears the semblance of the true and beau- 
tiful. We cannot step on the serpent, even though 


212 


Dorothy Delafield. 


we are walking daily in his trail, and his venom 
poison the very air we breathe. 

Judge Pettibone came home. It was late when 
he arrived, and he let himself in with his latch-key. 
The loneliness which had been in his heart ever 
since he bade Nathan farewell smote him anew. 
Where was Ellice? No return before had ever been 
so late but that her bright eyes and mischievous 
face were in the hall to greet him, or she stood, 
candle in hand, leaning far over the banister, ready 
to smother him with kisses and beguile him into 
her room for a talk and a lunch, over a bright fire. 
Just then a servant passed through the hall. 

“ Where is Miss Ellice?” asked the judge, stand- 
ing with satchel in hand before Andrew’s astonished 
gaze. 

“Miss Ellice! Gone to Appleton. Her and the 
French lady went this afternoon.” 

“ Didn’t she know I was coming home ?” 

“ None of us servants hear noffin of it. Did the 
jedge write ? ” 

“ Yes; the letter ought to have come this morn- 
ing.” 

Now madame had chanced to get the letters from 
the post-office that morning, as she had found it 
necessary to go to the little country-store at the 
“ Corners.” There had been a handful of them, 
and it was not until Ellice and she were well on 
their way home from Appleton, at midnight, whither 
they had gone to attend a large ball, that madame 
pulled out from the pocket of her wrap, together 
with her handkerchief, one of the judge’s familiar 
yellow envelopes. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


213 

Ellice snatched it, as she saw the handwriting and 
her own name, and cried, 

“ Why, where did this come from, madame?” 

“Out of my pocket, surely, with my handker- 
chief. But I did not know it was there. I thought 
I gave it to you this morning ; it must have stuck 
to the side of my pocket, as letters will sometimes, 
you know. It is from your father, is it not ? ’’ 

But Ellice had torn off the envelope, which was 
fluttering away over the snow, and was reading the 
brief but loving message in the brilliant moonlight. 

“ Father comes home to-night,” and her eyes, 
filled with consternation, were turned upon madame 
with sudden anger. 

“ I would not have been away for any considera- 
tion. He never came home before and found me 
away, and at a ball, too, in these times. He will be 
angry, madame ; I know he will.” 

“ I am very sorry,” and madame’s soft, beautiful 
face, in its fleecy muffler, rosy with the cold, and 
young and appealing in the favoring light, was 
turned to Ellice with almost maternal solicitude. 
She took Ellice’s hand under the robe, and drew it 
through her arm, and drew the young girl toward 
her, and petted her and talked so much about her 
own anxiety, lest the judge should think her care- 
less, that Ellice all at once forgot her father and his 
loneliness in the fear that he would show his dis- 
pleasure to this new friend, whose very presence 
seemed necessary nowadays to keep her from 
moodiness or fretfulness. 

“ O, I will assure him that you could not help 
it,” said Ellice. 


214 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ But ” — and madame paused — “ you did not re- 
ceive the letter. Tell him so. Do not make further 
explanations.” 

“ But I would not be willing to feign surprise in 
meeting father; there has never been any thing like 
that between usT 

“ That sounds like Dorothy,” and madame burst 
into a rippling laugh. Ellice all at once asked her- 
self whether it would not be better, as long as she 
had not intended any wrong, to do as madame bade, 
and thus shield her friend, and keep her father in a 
good humor. It was well and right for Dorothy to 
be like her, but in any thing save book lore Ellice 
did not aspire to emulate Dorothy. Madame, in 
manner, expression, and — yes, unconsciously though 
it was — in principle, too, was the living present ideal 
after whom Ellice intended to fashion an elegant 
womanhood. 

Judge Pettibone handed his satchel to Andrew, 
drew off his heavy coat, all the time a frown settling 
down upon his face, and his straight lips setting 
themselves, as they did when he was dissatisfied. 
The proprieties of life had always taken care of 
themselves so well in his home, because of the great 
affection and amity that existed between him and 
his children. He had never much insisted on defer- 
ence to his will or judgment; for if Nathan or Ellice 
went astray in trifling things, their love sped them 
toward him straight as an arrow in all matters of 
importance. 

Andrew turned away with that deprecating assent 
which the colored race can assume instantly, as the 
judge said. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


215 


“ That is all.” 

Judge Pettibone stood there in the hall, noticing 
its luxury and warmth and comfort, and contrasting 
them with the barracks where Nathan was sleeping 
that night, and he felt more and more vexed with 
Ellice. Like most men, his simple, hearty appreci- 
ation of material well-being made him sympathetic 
with the reverse ; for it is the merely intellectual 
man after all who can pass the beggar in the street 
unmoved, or dwell on the delights of thought when 
the fire burns low and the larder is empty. Judge 
Pettibone loved his book or newspaper all the 
better after a hearty meal, or when his great length 
was reposing on a sofa in his library. He felt more 
and more annoyed, and with growing unreasonable- 
ness. If his letter had miscarried it ought not to 
have done so ; at all events, it would have been a 
small attention for Ellice to have had the sleigh at 
the little station twice a day, in case he did come. 
To be compelled to walk a mile on such a cold 
night ! Now the judge had greatly enjoyed this 
walk, and, after the close, chilly atmosphere of the 
cars, it had been just what he had needed to insure 
him a good night’s sleep. If he had found Ellice 
ill on his return he would have expatiated on the 
pleasure of the exercise to a man of his vigorous 
constitution. To find her away was to be aggrieved 
at every turn. He walked across the hall as the 
clock chimed the half-hour before twelve. He ex- 
pected to find his favorite fire-place in the library 
bleak and deserted, but he would go in and write a 
letter to Nathan. After all, delightful as Ellice 
might be with her whimsicalities and caresses, the 


2i6 


Dorothy Delafield. 


dear affectionateness of Nathan’s gaze meant ten- 
fold more if a man felt serious. So the judge 
opened the door, which swung noiselessly on its 
well-oiled hinges, and stood still again, but this 
time in the door-way, and facing a picture of warmth 
and homefulness which made him think anew what 
a sweet thing a young girl may be after all. 

There was a sonorous wind roaring, and it struck 
against the north end of the library with a hollow wail 
that mounted into a long, whispering whistle ; urged 
by such a call the pine knots and hickory logs vied 
with one another in sending their flaming messengers 
up the huge throat of the chimney. What with the 
fire and wind together, there was a commingling of 
sounds, both cheerful and desolate, that emphasized 
the mellow light raying out from the shaded lamp 
on the center-table. The deep shadows that filled 
the corners made a Rembrandt setting for the fire, 
the table, the capacious arm-chair beside it, and 
Dorothy curled up,‘ feet and all, in its comfortable 
depths, absorbed in her book. 

The judge watched her eager, shining eyes glance 
from line to line. The fire-light, as it rose and fell, 
brought and dispersed the golden light in her hair 
as it waved back from her forehead. The heat and 
her interest had flushed her cheeks, until they 
seemed like roses against the dark-green covering 
of her chair. Her forehead, in its breadth and 
roundness, looked at once so childish and so noble, 
that Judge Pettibone felt her girlish purity and re- 
called the silent but pervading dignity of her father’s 
presence. His great chest rose in an involuntary 
sigh as he thought, “ If only Ellice could make such 


Dorothy Delafield. 


217 


friends of my books.” He would have stood there 
much longer, trying to hug to his heart the fancy 
that Dorothy was his child — to be his companion, 
as only a beloved child can, through the long winter 
evenings, when he wished to read aloud what he 
found enjoyable. Strong as he was in his nature. 
Judge Pettibone desired constant companionship. 
He enjoyed nothing fully unless he shared it. How 
pleasant it would be to have such a girl beside him, 
to alternately fondle and train, to be now a daughter 
and then a pupil, to see her mind expand until in 
its apprehension it could receive all that he could 
instill into it. As much as Nathan and Ellice had 
filled the years of his loneliness since his wife’s 
death, they had never met this need. For an intel- 
lectual man to have once enjoyed the society of a 
woman, both domestic and intellectual, is to be dis- 
satisfied forever with any thing that falls short of 
this combination. Judge Pettibone had hoped 
against hope for his children through the years of 
their motherless youth. His own indolence and 
procrastination, whenever an unpleasant duty was 
to be performed, had led him to wait and expect 
that suddenly Nathan and Ellice would desire to 
study and would force themselves into proper con- 
ditions. 

His abundant vitality found its vent as often 
in mental exertion as in physical activity, but it was 
not so with his children. Their horses, their dogs, 
long walks that brought them home exhausted, and 
the perfect satisfaction they took in each other, had 
filled the years, while the tutors and governesses 
had bent to their will, and congratulated them- 


2I8 


Dorothy Delafield. 


selves on a lesson ever so indifferently learned. 
Judge Pettibone had no means of knowing, except 
through Ellice’s letters, that she spent hours over 
her books. He took with a large grain of allowance 
all that she had written on this subject, and would 
much rather she should have dilated to him on 
Dorothy’s influence than madame as a wonderful 
woman, since Dorothy also had been his own as 
well as Ellice’s deliberate choice. 

If Judge Pettibone had been aphoristic, he would 
have been able to say to himself that there was not 
a French woman in America that he would trust. 
Man of the world as he was, in women he liked the 
simple truthfulness of Puritan ancestry, and grace 
of manner and heart far more than grace of speech. 
The silent respectful regard of Dorothy’s eyes, the 
attentive poise of her head, were more to him when 
he talked than Madame Rameau’s wreathing smiles 
and voluble graphic assent. 

Dorothy all at once looked up from her book, a 
happy, satisfied smile spreading over her face, as 
she drew a long breath of relief. Her gaze, arrested 
by the open door and Judge Pettibone’s silent, com- 
manding figure, changed suddenly to one of startled 
wonder. She half-rose from her chair, afraid to 
question him, and if the truth must be told, half- 
afraid, at that late hour, whether she really beheld 
him or not. When a young mind has been lost a 
whole evening in the wanderings of Ulysses, and 
arrives at length at midnight, “ after much vicissitude 
both by land and sea,” in such a snug harbor as 
Penelope’s home, purified from the rabble of all its 
foes, it is no difficult art to believe in gods and 


Dorothy Delafield. 


219 


goddesses, fairies, goblins, or even nineteenth cent- 
ury ghosts. Dorothy was greatly relieved to see 
Judge Pettibone advance into the room in a life- 
like manner, and with an undeniable creaking of the 
floor under his heavy steps. She was so undoubt- 
edly glad to see him, and held up her face in such 
a pretty, delighted way when he bent to kiss her, 
that he felt all at once that he had come home, and 
that the welcome of one young heart, at least, was 
ready for him, come when he would. He would 
not ask Dorothy any questions about Ellice. 
Through a half-defined loyalty to his fatherhood, 
as after all potent in some way which Ellice would 
make clear, he preferred to hear from Ellice her- 
self the explanation of her absence. He bade Dor- 
othy be seated, and standing before the fire with 
his hands behind him, he began to tell her of Na- 
than ; and with that power to color a child’s virtues 
which only a parent has, he made Nathan such a 
hero that, although his boy had been in no action, 
not even the siege of Vicksburg, or Sherman’s 
march to the sea, or the privations of Libby Prison 
could have made Nathan greater or less to Dorothy. 

Whatever might come Nathan would never flinch 
from duty ; of that she was sure. 

Meanwhile, Virginia, the cook of many years, 
whom the judge had bought in Richmond, and given 
her freedom, stole in noiselessly with a tray, con- 
taining hot coffee and cold turkey and crullers. 

Judge Pettibone and Dorothy were having a fine 
lunch, and Dorothy was listening with sparkling 
eyes to the judge’s solution of this and that myth 
in Homer, when there was a tinkling of bells out- 


220 


Dorothy Delafield. 


side, and then a rustling and bustle in the hall. 
But the judge went right on, his eyes on Dorothy s 
face, half in command, and half as if nothing should 
interrupt his story till he had finished. 

The door opened, and Ellice came running in. 
She frowned to see her father so comfortable and 
some one else beside herself his listener and admirer. 
Shame and contrition flooded her expressive feat- 
ures as she flashed an impatient look at Dorothy. 

As for madame she was at once conclusively con- 
vinced that Dorothy was as designing as herself, 
and shrugged her shoulders to think that the grave 
judge could take pleasure in this dull, prudish girl, 
who had entertained conscientious scruples about 
attending the ball at Appleton. Even she, however, 
could not accuse Dorothy of waylaying the judge, 
although she could not forgive her for gaining any 
of his thought and interest. But she had no time 
now for any thing but well-feigned astonishment to 
find Judge Pettibone at home, and talked inces- 
santly, asking a hundred questions to cover Ellice’s 
lame attempt at surprise. 

Judge Pettibone had a heavier heart all at once 
than he had felt at the railway station two hours 
before. Could it be possible that Ellice had received 
his letter and attempted this subterfuge, which he 
detected as instantly as it was tried, to cover her 
fondness for balls. 

“Didn’t you receive my letter this morning?” 
asked the judge of Ellice, a smoldering, dull light 
gathering in his black eyes. 

“ No,” said Ellice, but with a constraint that in- 
dicated something behind it. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


221 


“ Ring for Andrew, Ellice. I will find out who 
went for the mail this morning.” 

“Excuse me, Judge Pettibone ; I went for the 
mail this morning,” said Madame Rameau. “ The 
postmaster said, with his usual curiosity, ‘ There’s 
one letter for you. Miss Ramo, and the rest’s for 
the house.’ I put the house-letters in my pocket 
without looking at them, and thought I gave them 
to Andrew. Perhaps he mislaid or dropped yours. 
I am sure your daughter could not have been coaxed 
to go with me, if she had known you were coming 
home.” And madame threw a world of insinuating, 
tender reproach into her tones, which had its effect 
upon the judge. 

“Your father always has been first in your 
thoughts,” and the judge held out his arms to El- 
lice, who rushed into his embrace, guilty and glad, 
at the same time lost in surprise and fear that mad- 
ame could tell the truth so glibly, and yet end it 
with a supposition ; a lie, indeed, in its effect, but 
only half a lie. But it had saved them from so 
much discomfort. Now, the judge was only par- 
tially satisfied with madame’s explanation ; but he 
had noticed the look of relief that had come into 
Ellice’s face, and accustomed, as he had been for 
years, to inspiring fear, it flattered him that his un- 
tamed daughter had been afraid of him. Whatever 
delinquency there had been, it was occasioned, he 
was sure, by “ this French woman.” Spring should 
end his compact with her. So the judge held El- 
lice to his heart, and chided her in tones that were 
a caress in themselves for enjoying such gayeties, 
while Nathan was exposed to privations. 


222 


Dorothy Delafieli). 


“ Nathan would not want me to sit and weep all 
the time he was gone. I could not help him by 
giving up balls and parties, or I would most gladly. 
I miss him so much that I must have excitement. 
You have been in Washington a month in the midst 
of all these grand and stirring deeds, and we have 
been moping here at home.” 

Madame looked at Ellice in the fondest admira- 
tion, and as the judge turned to Dorothy and asked, 
“ Have you found the month a dull one?” elevated 
her shoulders and eyebrows slightly, but with such 
expression that Dorothy felt her contempt through 
and through. 

‘‘ Perhaps I am not a good judge,” said Dorothy, 
lifting her hand to her face and pushing her hair 
back, as she always did when she was embarrassed. 
“ What Ellice has known all her life is new to me, 
and very delightful.” Dorothy looked at both El- 
lice and the judge with mingled love and depreca- 
tion, anxious only not to contrast herself in any 
way with Ellice. 

Ellice read her thought, and felt a loyal, loving 
throb for her friend, which glowed all over her face. 

“You sweet Dorothy!” she said. 

“ The little diplomat,” said madame to herself. 
“ She shall not feather her nest in this house, if I 
can help it.” 

“ Come, children, it is late, and we must retire. 
We will have a nine o’clock breakfast.” 

Ellice shook her head in joyful approval to her 
father, and withdrawing herself from his reluctantly 
loosening grasp, she twined her arm about Dorothy 
and said, “ Come,” with sleepy gentleness. The two 


Dorothy Delafield. 


223 


girls went out of the room, madame lingering an in- 
stant ; but Judge Pettibone drew himself erect, and 
looking steadfastly at her, bowed gravely and form- 
ally. She retired, but with a lively hatred and 
pique in her bosom. 

“ See here, Dorothy,” said Ellice, as soon as they 
were alone, displaying her father’s letter stripped of 
its envelope, “ I told him a lie ! ” And Ellice’s wide- 
open black eyes, melancholy and defiant, stared at 
Dorothy. “Not that I have any conscientious scruples 
about a lie ; but I think it a mean way of saving 
yourself. I did it, though, to save madame. The 
letter stuck in her pocket, and we only found it out 
as we were coming home. I suspect it stuck on 
purpose,” and Ellice laughed now in a high, strained 
way that grated painfully on Dorothy’s ear. 

“But isn’t she a wonderful woman, Dorothy? — 
the most dare-devil kind of a woman. I never really 
expected to meet such a superb creation outside of 
a book. Why, she could be a Lady Macbeth, or a 
Portia — any thing that required diplomacy or dar- 
ing,” and Ellice flushed more and more with her 
enthusiasm. 

“ She didn’t need saving,” said Dorothy, con- 
temptuously ; “ she is not afraid of your father.” 

“ Not afraid of my father? I have never seen a 
person yet who was not afraid of him. I suppose 
you are not.” 

“ That is a different matter,” said Dorothy, mus- 
ingly. “ Madame is afraid of somebody, but that 
person is not in this house,” she added, with deter- 
mination. “ Even if she did dread your father’s dis- 
pleasure, what kind of a woman is she to permit a 


224 


Dorothy Delafield. 


young girl to bear her faults. I am ashamed for 
her,” and Dorothy’s eyes sparkled until they were 
black. 

“ Save your sympathy,” said Ellice, haughtily. 

Such a simple creature as you are, Dorothy, can- 
not understand a complex nature like madame’s. 
You talk just this way when she is telling us about 
the divinity of genius. Madame says you always 
stifle her when she is accounting for the faults of 
such men as Goethe and Rousseau. You seem the 
concentrated essence of Quincy narrowness, Dor- 
othy, when you begin to express your views. As 
you see the world, my dear, you will grow more and 
more mutual. There are so many sides to every 
question.” 

Dorothy knew that Ellice was talking against the 
grain of her nature. She set her teeth together, and 
clinched her hands at her side till, in her effort, the 
chills ran up and down her back, but she would not 
allow her anger vent. Quincy narrowness ! If it 
were Quincy narrowness to tell the truth, regardless 
of consequences, she hoped to be saved from Pa- 
risian width. 

Ellice, seeing the anger in Dorothy’s face, was 
suddenly seized with a burning desire to break 
down the self-control which gave her a certain mas- 
tery, and made her complacent. 

“ Dorothy, the only thing I dislike in you is your 
sanctimoniousness. It is as you say. This life is, 
of course, very beautiful to you ; wider, doubtless, 
than you can grasp just now. As madame says, it 
is an education for you merely to live here.” 

Ellice triumphed as she planted each sting, and. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


225 


strange contradiction, her heart ached enough to 
break as she saw the muscles contract about Dor- 
othy’s mouth. 

“ Ellice — Ellice Pettibone, I will not stand this,’* 
gasped Dorothy, at length. “ I came here because 
you urged me to — because you said I could help 
you, and if I can’t, I will go home. I’ll go to-night,” 
and Dorothy started toward the door with an air of 
grand determination. She turned, however, her af- 
fection for Ellice getting the mastery of her, with a 
look of such mute reproach and love, that Ellice 
sprang toward her and pulled her back. 

The wayward girl rained kisses on Dorothy’s face 
and neck and hands. She clasped her in her arms. 
With a full tide of apology Ellice called herself 
mean and wicked and cruel, feeling the truth of 
the epithets all the time, and also half-enjoying the 
scene she had been able to evoke. 

After a long talk, so long that the cocks began to 
crow, she closed her tired, strained eyes with her 
hand in Dorothy’s, again under the calm, sweet in- 
fluence a kind Providence had sent to interpose be- 
tween her and evil. But Dorothy went to sleep 
sadly perplexed at the havoc of unrest and wild 
romance that their conversation had revealed surg- 
ing in Ellice’s restless mind. Ah, ’if Judge Pettibone 
would only see what her intuitions had divined. If 
he would only direct their lessons, and dismiss 

Madame Rameau. 

15 


226 


Dorothy Delafield. 


©HAPJPBF? UII. 


HE next day there was such a loving consider- 



ation in Ellice’s little attentions to her father, 


that he was confirmed anew in the belief that she was 
the dearest of daughters, and that, take it all in all, 
more was gained in the care of children by giving 
them a free rein, than by constantly restraining them 
or teaching them self-repression, or the sternness of 
duty. An untrammeled youth gave one a zest for 
the responsibilites of middle life. 

So the judge, seeing her begin her lessons with 
great ardor right after breakfast, and enjoying, in 
spite of himself, madame’s suavity and intelligence, 
put faraway from him the impression of the previous 
night, and felt really glad, on the whole, that the 
young ladies had so desirable a companion and 
teacher. The evening before he was tired and 
gloomy and hungry. This morning, after a good 
night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, the world was 
a different place, and every body in it better than 
could be expected. 

Ellice, through her effort to put into consistency 
with herself what was foreign to her nature, was in 
a most amicable frame toward her father and Dor- 
othy, and over-obedient to madame. Thus a state 
of things existed for several days similar to the 
conditions when two armies declare a truce. The 
greatest friendliness and confidence were manifested 
in the conversations between madame and the 


Dorothy Delafield. 


227 


judge and Ellice. Dorothy, by the tacit consent 
of all three, was a silent factor ; but how often it 
happens, in social problems, that the person set down 
by others as zero, becomes, by a change of circum- 
stances, the one who reduces their value tenfold, 
or increases it in like measure. What madame 
thought was true. The life Dorothy was living was 
to her an education in itself, but it was only a part of 
the education which her warm, large nature was to 
receive. She did not realize the acuteness with 
which she was sharpening her powers of perception ; 
neither did she know that the rigidity of thought 
and statement, induced by the self-denial she had 
always been obliged to practice at home, had given 
a narrowness to her views about much that was 
harmless, which was mellowing into a broader and 
truer conception of pleasure, as healthful and inspir- 
ing. In Quincy argument never ceased on questions 
whose moral import was altogether relative. At 
Judge Pettibone’s the questions were never broached 
for discussion. Nevertheless, it was true in Doro- 
thy’s case, as in every other young person’s, that an 
opinionated youth gives an impulse to action while 
the blood is warm, and the world untried, that af- 
fords far better results than a personalty which can 
easily lose its local coloring. 

To Judge Pettibone all the shades of opinion and 
occasional terms of expression, which madame dis- 
posed of in the word ’ were like the raw- 

ness of new, but fine, wine, that would ripen into a 
subtle and delicate bouquet. Dorothy’s girlhood 
promised a sweeter blossoming than the bleak air of 
Quincy could have unfolded ; but Quincy winds had 


228 


Dorothy Delafield. 


strengthened the sturdy little plant, and fitted it to 
bear transplanting. 

The Greek and Latin lessons, which Dorothy had 
pursued alone since the departure of Dr. Withers, 
were renewed by the judge one bright morning in 
the library. 

There was something novel to him in the softness 
and roundness of this girl’s nature, in her trust- 
fulness and sunny sweetness, combined with such 
quickness and correctness of mental grasp, as she 
sat before him, her golden head bent over her work, 
or her confiding eye brightening under his instruc- 
tions. He began to take a romantic pleasure in his 
self-imposed duty. 

The second month was much more real and fruit- 
ful to Dorothy, comprising, as it did, the daily walk 
or drive, the morning hours spent with madame, the 
afternoon in solitary study, the evening with the 
family in the library, madame and Ellice embroider- 
ing, while the judge heard her lessons*. Then came 
the delightful hour, while the judge read aloud and 
commented, all listening attentively. ' When Na- 
than’s letters arrived, as they often did just after the 
family had gathered for the evening, with accounts 
of his long marches, the bivouacs in the resplendent 
moonlight, or under stormy skies, and containing 
many an ardent longing for the day when he should 
stand at the front in some great action, beneath the 
aching fear in the hearts of father and sister, as they 
read, was a pride that one of theirs had been among 
the first to go forth to the defense of his country, 
and in the hearts of the others a growing interest in 
the silent, yet gracious, young man, who, in some 


Dorothy Delafield. 229 

way, had left the impression that he was the heart 
of the life into which they had been admitted. 

The cold had been intense for days. The coun- 
try far and near was covered with a frozen mass of 
snow, that thawed just enough at midday to con- 
geal at night into a glistening crust, that sparkled 
until it almost blinded the eyes of any who ventured 
out. Day succeeded day with the mercury but a 
few degrees above zero. The days lengthened, but 
the cold only waxed greater. 

It was five o’clock of a bright, still, bitter day. 
Dorothy was sitting thinking seriously of her future, 
of what she should do and where she should go 
when Ellice and she had finished their studies. The 
occasional visits to her home made her heart ache 
when she compared her present luxury with its 
plainness. The abundance of her food, the ele- 
gance of all these airy rooms, which were hers to 
wander through and occupy at will, would often 
turn her thoughts, with a poignant suddenness, to 
the simple little chamber which Elizabeth occupied 
alone, the tea-table, with her father asking a bless- 
ing, and a reverent stillness upon all the little 
group. It was home, and in this quiet hour, with 
the waning light gathering gloom every second, she 
longed for it so that her heart ached. Giant sat 
beside her, his tail giving questioning taps, his 
steadfast yellow eyes fixed solemnly upon her face. 
She looked at him, stroked his head, and said, 

“ Giant, I want to go home ! ” 

Giant gave a succession of affirmative taps, and 
licked her hand caressingly and gently. 

She rose as the room grew darker and went to 


230 


Dorothy Delafield. 


the western windows. She stepped in the recess 
behind the heavy red curtains and looked out. 
The sun had set, but the west looked as if some 
hidden light had penetrated the atmosphere to 
glorify the pale sky. It was a mass of deep orange 
color. 

The carriage drive wound in two or three curves 
from the piazza to the main road, its white surface 
softened by the intense glow of the sky. Dorothy 
leaned against the window, subdued by the som- 
berness and solitude of the scene. The numberless 
larches and cedars were statuesque in their straight- 
ness and immovability. Not a person to be seen ; 
not a vehicle on the broad highway in sight ; not 
even a sparrow, domestic and noisy, to break the 
utter quiet. How solemn a landscape is at night- 
fall. The yellow light began to fade a little. Dor- 
othy had been gazing into its clearness with 
thoughts of that mysterious eternity to which she 
was each day speeding onward. At an hour like 
this, it seemed as though the west must open and 
reveal a heavenly vision. Dorothy always loved the 
Lord with a sense of nearness and reality at twi- 
light. 

When her eye rested on the bit of road again she 
saw a tall man, walking slowly and feebly. Some- 
thing familiar in the figure riveted her attention. 
The man turned toward the gates, he opened 
them with difficulty ; he paused a moment, as if 
surveying the windows, and then slowly advanced, 
swaying a little toward either side of the walk, that 
followed the line of the carriage-road, as if he could 
not altogether command his steps. He drew nearer. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


231 


and all at once Dorothy recognized Nathan. She 
felt as if she should cry for very pity, he looked so 
ill. She flung open the long window, and sped 
across the piazza down the drive, over the snow, 
her face in a glow of tremulous sympathy. She put 
one strong, warm arm around him. 

“ Lean on me, Mr. Nathan, lean hard ; I am 
strong ! ” 

The young man tried to speak, but his lips con- 
tracted, and he only looked appealingly at Dorothy, 
whose strong arm braced him more firmly as his 
knees trembled. 

“Just a few steps more — see! the window is 
open ! ” and her voice spurred him on. “ O, why 
does not some one come?” 

“ Giant ! ” called Dorothy, and the great dog rose 
from his dream before the fire and bounded out, 
barking and whining, as Nathan tottered up the 
steps. “ Right in here, Mr. Nathan,” urged Doro- 
thy. “ See the fire, and your chair! ” 

She talked as she would to a sick child, and the 
tender urging was music to him. 

He stepped through the window, and then, 
whether it was the heat, or whether the vision was 
too intense an embodiment of home, he fell. 

Judge Pettibone had come down from his cham- 
ber, aroused by the ado Giant made. Silence 
reigned in the warm roomy hall, but as he opened 
the library door the cold air rushed in through the 
open window, for Nathan had fallen across the 
threshold. 

What a picture that was in the dim light. Giant’s 
tail wagging, his long, drooping ears brushing 


232 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Nathan’s unconscious face ; Dorothy sitting on the 
floor, holding the head of the prostrate man in her 
lap. 

Judge Pettibone drew Nathan within the window, 
while Dorothy went to summon Andrew. 

The judge forced some brandy inside Nathan’s 
white lips, and tenderly covered him with a sofa 
rug. When Andrew came they lifted Nathan on to 
one of the broad sofas. 

He opened his eyes after a little, hollow, melan- 
choly, and dreamy, and seeing Dorothy’s earnest 
face bending over him, and his father’s kindly, 
noble countenance, he drew a deep sigh, closed his 
eyes, and presently fell into a heavy slumber that 
continued late into the evening. 

The family were all there when he awoke ; even 
madame, who sat in a low chair a little removed, 
working on some piece of fancy work. But her eyes 
visited very often the invalid’s face, a furtive curi- 
osity lurking in them. 

“ Why had he come home ? ” she asked. 

He appeared very weak, but not seriously ill. 

Even Dorothy, with her ardent patriotism, and 
her great belief that if ever Nathan did come home 
before that civil strife was ended, it would be be- 
cause he bore the glory of a wounded hero, was 
questioning his return. Now that he was awake, 
and with no visible ailment, she felt uneasy and 
depressed. 

The aged smile to see it possible for the young 
to have ideals. The young know no greater anguish 
than to lose these ideals, and are restless till they 
fashion new ones. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


233 


As for the judge and Ellice, all inquiry was lost 
for the present in simple delight in having Nathan 
home once more. Ellice’s face dimpled continu- 
ally into irrepressible smiles. The judge waited on 
his son with the assiduity and tenderness of a 
mother. The instinctive tie of blood, the homo- 
geneity of the vitality and temperament common to 
all three, drew them together, as a family, in unusual 
closeness. Whoever should break that bond would 
bring great disaster, for this was a house that would 
fall if divided. 

Nathan showed no inclination to explain how he 
had come or why he had come. He manifested as 
simple and ingenuous a gladness to be there as 
Giant could have done, if he had wandered far from 
home and been ill-treated. 

Two or three days passed thus. His appetite had 
come; his strength was returning almost hourly; 
he had muffled himself once or twice in a fur coat, 
and taken several rounds on the piazza. 

The propriety of saying something seemed at 
last to press itself even upon his silent nature. 
Why he chose Dorothy as the one to whom to 
speak first is, perhaps, not difficult to explain. At 
some time or other in our lives we all appeal for 
judgment. We are not sufficient unto ourselves. 
So, one morning, when they chanced to be left 
alone, Nathan, with an incipient shyness in his eyes, 
and a faint color spotting here and there his pale 
face, said, 

“ Dorothy, I have had my opportunity for life, 
and have lost it. I know you wonder why I came 
home. I should have died had I stayed ; but, all the 


234 


Dorothy Delafield. 


same, it would have been better to have remained. 
I have found a substitute to receive doubtless the 
bullets that I ought by rights to have courted, and I 
have turned my face homeward. I’ve come to stay.” 

Nathan had gone on in a sort of dogged, forced 
way, as if all this must be said to some one. Doro- 
thy was bent slightly forward, a horrified disappoint- 
ment in her face. 

“ But you are sick, Mr. Nathan ! When you are 
well, you will want to go back.” 

“ I am only homesick ; I shall never go back. 
There are thousands down there in the armies 
worse off and feebler than I have ever been. They 
keep up on their grit. They lie on hemlock 
boughs, on the damp earth, and shiver and burn all 
night, and get up and march all day. What do 
they do it on ? Pure nerve force ! There are men 
in our regiment whose cheeks are so hollow that 
they look like dead men. It never occurs to them 
to get out- of it all. You see, Dorothy,” and Nathan 
regarded her with a half-melancholy, half-cynical 
look; “You see, Ellice and I have never done any 
thing in our lives longer than we wanted to do it. 
We have literally had our own way always. After 
the first romance of going to the war was over I, 
of course, wanted to come home. I fought the 
want, tried to believe I liked it, and when I could 
not do that, that I liked duty. I don’t know what 
duty is. I have instincts, propensities, most of 
them good enough, and these have always made 
me a harmless fellow. My natural pride kept me 
from this step for weeks. But pride is a poor reed 
to lean on, if it be not propped by the power to do 


Dorothy Delafield. 


235 


your dut3^ You can’t do a tremendous duty when 
you have shut your eyes to little ones all your life. 
I am curious to see where Ellice will break down. 
It’s a part of life ; it will have to come.” 

Nathan received his judgment. 

Dorothy stood still. She had absolutely nothing 
to say. Her face showed a quiet withdrawal from 
him. He all at once stood before her as a generous 
hearted, but indolent and selfish, man. At that 
moment Giant, sitting between them, and looking 
from one to the other, seemed to her more worthy 
of respect. Giant was what he was born to be ; he 
was an excellent, faithful dog ; but Nathan had 
lacked manliness. Dorothy was too timid and too 
kind, in the face of his self-imposed confession, to 
say any thing. She stood irresolute a minute or 
two, disappointment and shame for him sweeping 
over her blushing face. Nothing renders a lofty 
nature more awkward for the time being than to 
come into sudden contact with something of which 
it has no real conception, but which it instinctively 
despises. Nathan had described to Dorothy what 
would have been to her an impossibility. At length 
she said, 

“ You are sick, Mr. Nathan ; you must be sick ! ” 
She turned, went a few steps away, and then, as if 
relenting, turned again, with a smile of great sweet- 
ness, and said : “ I am going to my room to study.” 

That was her duty. That little sentence stabbed 
the young man. Dorothy turned again when she 
reached the door, the same deprecating, distant 
smile on her face. She shut it quietly behind her, 
as if she had stolen away from something dead. 


236 


Dorothy Delafield. 


©HAPTEI^ UIII. 

UMAN nature is the same the world over; 



n given certain characteristics, and certain 
stages on which to evolve them, the same denoue- 
ments invariably follow. 

The half-defined disappointment in the way in 
which his children had developed intellectually, 
which I attempted to portray in the beginning of 
this story, had led Judge Pettibone to hope much 
from Dorothy’s presence in his house. Painful as it 
had been to see Nathan exposed to the hardships 
of war, he, nevertheless, took great pride in allusions 
to the young captain. Every march, every halt, 
every engagement, every great battle, outside the 
momentous importance attaching to them, became 
of personal interest, as more or less describing 
Nathan’s life. When Judge Pettibone realized, as 
he did after a few days, that his hope of military 
fame, as well as his great anxiety for Nathan, were 
things of the past, his sanguine belief that ancestry 
and gentle breeding and a generous atmosphere 
would make children drift into right ways of 
thought and action, received another blow. It 
never occurred to him to force Nathan to return. 
But he centered his affection, if possible, more on 
Ellice ; he gave a closer attention to Dorothy’s reci- 
tations, and had several long talks with Madame 
Rameau on the best methods of educating girls. 
He took a simple, almost pathetic, pleasure in hear- 


Dorothy Delafield. 237 

ing Ellice describe what she had been reading and 
studying. 

Both children were so undeniably gifted — both 
inherited his retentive memory, his refined apprecia- 
tion. Why was this force, this will, this application, 
which he had, quite wanting in his children? 

Judge Pettibone had forgotton to estimate at 
their true value the unswerving obedience, the 
exact performance of daily tasks always demanded 
of him when a child. That one exception had 
made all the difference between him and his children. 
They had will sufficient, but discipline, as a means 
to future good, was something of which they were 
unconscious, and Judge Pettibone, through an almost 
idolizing affection, had simply overlooked the neces- 
sity of their having a personal experience in this 
way. Being a proud man, and having the respect 
and fame which came from the full and exact dis- 
charge of his public duties, he had felt as yet only 
the wound which pride can feel when the beloved 
do not challenge and force the attention which well- 
earned merit can command. But he felt sorely the 
awkward sympathy of his country neighbors, who 
mentioned Nathan’s coming home as if it were a 
matter of course, or simply ignored the fact by inquir- 
ing after the family, when it had been their wont to 
grow garrulous over the glory Mr. Nathan would be 
sure to win. Still, Nathan had only done what 
many others did, he had withdrawn, and kept a paid 
substitute in his place. 

Nevertheless, the fact remained, that in such 
serious, eventful times, Nathan had not returned 
because of business obligations, or other claims, but 


Dorothy Delafield. 


238 

simply to resume the life of an elegant young man 
of leisure. There were not as many at home in 
those days to make such a life delightful. Hunting 
and driving even had not the same enjoyment. 
Meeting sad or anxious hearts wherever he went, 
Nathan felt more and more that he had missed his 
destiny. 

Now that Nathan was safely at home, Ellice was 
merrier and wilder than ever. She spent much of 
the time that she had hitherto devoted to her books 
in conversation with Nathan, or in resuming their 
former rides and walks. She began to press upon 
her father, with renewed urging, the need of a month 
in New York, now that Nathan was back; and 
madame, in one of her many conferences, convinced 
the judge that she could better maintain Ellice’s 
interest in study by a break in an otherwise monot- 
onous winter. 

It had been a part of the judge’s plan in the 
autumn to accompany the girls in their trips to the 
city. But, like Dorothy, he found books his diver- 
sion at present. He arranged with madame, there- 
fore, all the details of their hotel and amusement, 
and made his own calculations for a time of solitude. 

Nathan, with an interest that he had never before 
shown, was one minute in a mind to accompany 
Ellice, and the next to remain at home. He 
abruptly decided to go on an extended tour through 
the West. 

When madame at length obtained Judge Petti- 
bone’s consent to the vacation, her face wore a 
depth of contentment to which it had been a 
stranger for several weeks. She was like a hunter 


Dorothy Delafield. 


239 


who had set a trap in the woods, and who, after al- 
most despairing of success, found delay rewarded 
with finer game than usual. She closed the library 
door very quietly when her conference with the 
judge had ended, but the instant she was alone, her 
step had the spring and quickness of youth. She 
passed rapidly up the stairs in search of Ellice. She 
found her alone, as she had hoped. Dorothy and 
Ellice were not very much together these days. 

It is all settled, ma cherey' and madame ex- 
tended her hands dramatically. “ No more books for 
a month ; only object lessons. Shakespeare’s plays 
in the morning, and the same at night, at the thea- 
ter ; a little French conversation while we are dress- 
ing, and opera in the afternoon. And then the 
magazins ! You should replenish your wardrobe. 
You are sadly in need of new dresses. If you were 
not so beautiful, I should feel quite ashamed of you ! 
What shopping we shall have to do ! Do you sup- 
pose your friends will beset you while we are there ? ” 
and madame looked dismayed at the thought. 
Then, brightening, she exclaimed, with girlish im- 
pulsiveness, “ Do not send your cards to any one. 
Let us be mistress of our days, plan our own enjoy- 
ments, be free to go and come as we chose. Let 
us be elegant Bohemians ! ” 

“ That suits me exactly. I shall have so much 
visiting, and that sort of fol de rol a year hfence. 
Yes, we will please ourselves. We must have a 
sprinkling of lectures and church-going for Dorothy, 
I suppose.” 

Madame clasped her hands in dismay. 

“ I really forgot she was going.” 


240 Dorothy Delafield. 

Her face contracted in disapproval and intense 
thought. 

“ Does Dorothy need to go ? ’’ she asked, at 
length. 

“Ah! as to need— more than either of us, I 
hope ; ” and Ellice laughed. “ Dorothy is so good 
and sweet, she is so true, we ought to take her. 
She is my soul, madame. I would be a worthless 
wretch if it were not for her.” 

Ellice took great pleasure, aside from her respect 
for Dorothy, in negatively informing madame how 
destitute her example was of any soulfulness. 
Madame quite understood it all, but so long as her 
influence was controlling, she cared little what 
name Ellice did or did not give it. She made no 
profession of goodness in the abstract. She had no 
respect for any thing that wore the cloak of good- 
ness, save les convenances ; never to offend the pro- 
prieties was to succeed. To shock all proprieties, 
under the garb of observing them, was her delight. 

“ Why do you not want Dorothy, madame?” 

“ Why ? by the time we have satisfied half her 
compunctions, much of our opportunity for pleas- 
ure will be gone. It will take years to cultivate 
Dorothy into an esthetic view of things. She is 
not to the manor born, and it will be a painful proc- 
ess to train her. Deliver me from it ! ” 

“ Come, come, madame, you have some deviltry in 
your head, I know you have, and you think Doro- 
thy will discover it.” 

“ I am the most innocent woman in the world. I 
am going to New York solely for your good. I am 
too foreign to weep my eyes out over this fraternal 


Dorothy Delafield. 


241 


contest that is making you Americans so serious, 
and you are too young to realize what it means. 
So why should I not assist you to enjoy yourself? ” 
** At nineteen one has usually developed a little 
sympathy and judgment. Come, madame ! we both 
want to be wicked, properly wicked, of course,” and 
Ellice elevated her eyebrows, “ and you don’t want 
Dorothy setting up exclamation points whenever 
we have one of these wicked, good little times. 
Frankly speaking, I wish Dorothy did not care to 
go, but if she wants to, she shall. I could not be 
so selfish and mean as to shut her out.” 

“ She is not fitted for it,” said madame, with de- 
termination. “ I will admit that Dorothy is refined, 
but she is not cultured — so little savoir faire. She 
would be homesick from the day she got there.” 

Now madame had done what she intended to do, 
place a possibility before Ellice in conjunction with 
her desire. She knew Ellice’s indulgent love of 
self too well not to believe that the young girl 
would, in a few hours, find a hundred reasons why 
it would be better for Dorothy not to go to New 
York. So madame hummed a little tune, and said, 
“ My dear, the winter has been planned for your 
improvement and enjoyment.” 

“ Have I improved, madame ? ” 

“ Remarkably ! ” replied madame, seriously and 
emphatically. 

Ellice’s eyelids contracted, and her face looked 
cynical, as she said, 

I am much wiser; for instance, I do not pour 
all my thoughts into father’s ear, as I used to 
do — cela — ce nest pas convenable / I do not say my 
16 


242 


Dorothy Delafield. 


prayers any more, pourquoi? C est superstate ux. 
I do not tell the literal, naked truth, pourquoi? 
Cela fait uni atmosphere disagreeables. Yes, 
madame, I allow I have improved. My dear, good, 
simple, trustful father believes, against his con- 
victions, that I have been a better girl than ever 
before. I assure you, madame, I would have been 
a far more apt pupil if Dorothy had not been here. 
Two such good reasoners as you and Dorothy 
come to such different conclusions. How happy I 
am not to have any inclination to reason. With 
me to desire is to have. Do you think it will al- 
ways be so, madame? Shall I not come sometime 
face to face with a destiny stronger than I, not my 
real desire, and be conquered ? It sometimes seems 
to me that I shall,” and Ellice’s expression bright- 
ened and expanded with this question, put with a 
certain elevation of tone. 

“ Leave your destiny to me, my dear, and you 
will be happy. That is our French method with 
young girls.” 

“ I leave too much to you,” said Ellice, half sadly. 

I feel sometimes as if I were losing my identity 
with you. I seem to be having my own will, and 
all at once I find out that it is yours. If you should 
ever impose on me, I should hate you. I would 
hate any body ; I would pursue them with my hate 
if they deceived me.” 

The girl and the woman stood face to face for a 
moment, the eyes of both bright, wide open, inquir- 
ing. Ellice’s face was filled with a hungering ques- 
tioning. Madame’s blonde placidity was the 
picture of ingenuousness and sweetness. Even so 


Dorothy Delafield. 


243 

Satan looked when he accosted Uriel, under the 
garb of a cherub, and true for all time it is that 
hypocrisy is “ the only evil that walketh invisible, 
except to God alone.” 

There was a bustle of conversation and prepara- 
tion through the house all that day. 

Nathan and the judge had both spoken most 
kindly to Dorothy about the month of recreation in 
store for her. Neither questioned for a moment but 
that the young girl’s simple, but tasteful, wardrobe 
was sufficient for all her needs. And so it was, 
with such a month as the judge had projected. 

But Dorothy, with the quick intuition of her sex, 
and a growing consciousness of the delicacy of her 
relation to the family, wondered if it were, and 
waited, with sensitive eagerness, all day for madame 
and Ellice to include her in their projects. 

But, except at meals and during the lessons, 
shortened in time to an hour, she saw nothing of 
them. A consuming loneliness seized her. Her 
head ached dully, her cheeks burned, while her feet 
were like ice. 

From longing with all her heart to see the city, 
and taste . the pleasures madame was never weary of 
descanting upon, there came toward night such a 
revulsion of feeling that nothing would have 
tempted her to accompany them. Her little home 
among the hills seemed akin to Bunyan’s vision of 
the Celestial City. She felt as if she would steal 
away after dark and run, until she was in her 
mother’s arms. What a difference there would be 
there. There she would be overwhelmed with 
love. 


244 


Dorothy Delafield. 


How often, over and over, in the future, was her 
passionate, affectionate nature to turn to that haven 
of all safety, a mother s heart, and gain comfort and 
courage for renewed effort. She stood at dusk in 
her pink room, whose gay color for an hour past 
had seemed to mock her isolation, her face leaning 
against the window, peering out on the wind-swept 
lawn. The sky was mottled with purple clouds, 
and the trees were bending and tossing their naked 
arms. The evergreens sighed as they swayed. The 
shutters creaked. A blast now and then struck the 
corner of the house, and spent itself in a dreary 
howl. It was a dismal outlook, but not more dreary 
than her heart. 

Her door opened. She knew that Ellice had 
come, but she would not turn around. The tears 
were dropping down her cheeks in great hot beads. 
She reached her handkerchief furtively to her face 
and wiped them away, but a fresh shower followed. 

“ Why, what is the matter?” asked Ellice, as she 
put her arm around Dorothy, and felt her tremble. 
“Are you homesick?” 

She was ashamed of her growing power to dis- 
simulate. 

“ Yes,” said Dorothy, presently, with a gasp. 

“Don’t you want to go to New York now?” 
asked Ellice, still more ashamed of her eager de- 
sire to hear “ No ” from Dorothy. 

It came after a second, a proud, stubborn, little 
“ Noy' which Ellice understood. 

“ It will be awfully lonesome without you, but 
we wont make you go, unless — you — want— to. I 
will ask father to drive you home for a visit — then 


Dorothy Delafield. 


245 

we will all come back and study real hard till the 
spring. Would you like that?” 

Such a feeble little “Yes” came in response. 
Ellice did not want her there. She all at once recog- 
nized with mortification that if Ellice only had 
urged her, she would have been glad to go. 

Ellice had never felt so ashamed of herself. She 
understood the various feelings surging in Dorothy’s 
heart better even than her friend understood her- 
self, but, all the same, she experienced a wicked sort 
of intellectual triumph that Dorothy had excluded 
herself from the trip. While feeling sorry for 
Dorothy, she was conscious of a willful intention to 
so press matters that Dorothy would have no other 
resource but to go home during her absence. She 
did not remain very long, and when she had gone, 
the outside world, the room, and Dorothy’s heart 
vied with one another in darkness. 

When tea was announced, a half-hour later, Doro- 
thy went down with a bright spot under her eyes, 
but otherwise very pale. Her eyes shone with 
suppressed excitement. 

“ How handsome Dorothy looks to-night,” said 
the judge, as he lingered over the broiled chicken. 

Selecting Dorothy’s favorite part for her, he put 
the plate before her, and glanced so kindly and af- 
fectionately at her, that the lump in her throat 
threatened to choke her. She gave him a moment- 
ary, hopeless, sad little look, which he afterward 
remembered. But the next moment her head sat 
so proudly on her neck, that madame suddenly 
envied its pose, and Nathan, glancing at her with 
mild fullness of approbation, said : 


246 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“You look as if y<ou were on the eve of some 
great undertaking.” 

Madame drew herself together at these words, 
and then, with a smile of much sweetness, said, 

“ I have always insisted that Dorothy has char- 
acteristics of which we are all unconscious as yet. 
She is capable of a future; I think it will be a very 
good one, but it could be wicked. Your religious 
training will save you, my dear,” and madame 
patted Dorothy, who shivered under her touch. 

“ Dorothy wicked ! ” exclaimed Ellice, her eyes 
flashing. “ She could not be wicked, if she tried ! 
If such a thing could be true, Dorothy is one of 
the elect.” 

She flushed, and smiled at her with so much 
admiration that Dorothy, in whom excessive hu- 
mility was struggling at this moment with an ex- 
cessive pride, felt, “ Ellice does love me ; why does 
she not want me with her ? ” In her purity and 
ignorance she could not decide why. 

Ellice, with the contrariety so marked in her 
nature, never loved Dorothy better than at that 
moment ; the stately, quiet pride delighted her to 
fondness. 

“ What a dangerous woman she will be when she 
becomes conscious of her full power,” thought 
madame, and excused herself accordingly for being 
as merciless to her as she could have been to her 
equal in years. 

“ Don’t let a month in New York spoil you for 
pastoral delights, Dorothy,” said Nathan, in whose 
bonnet a bee had sung all at once. 

“ I am not going to New York,” she replied. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


247 


“ Not going ! ” and madame turned in her chair 
with great surprise. Ellice stepped on madame’s 
foot till she winced, and Dorothy, bewildered for 
the moment, looked at Ellice and saw her black 
eyes dancing with amusement and scorn. She felt 
in a tangle of doubt and suspicion that made her 
sick. 

“Why are you not going?” asked Judge Petti- 
bone, glancing at Dorothy with grave surprise. 

“ I must go home for a while.” 

She said this with a gentle insistence that dis- 
couraged any urging, and the judge, so full of 
queries on his own part, just now, sighed, and an- 
swered, 

“ Perhaps you have made a wise choice. We 
shall be more than anxious for you to return,” he 
added, with something like an appeal in his voice. 

“ You know you are my good angel, Dorothy,” 
and Ellice threw a world of affection into her gaze. 
“ Promise me that you will return when I do ? ” 

Dorothy, out of very dignity, as well as through 
a feeling of obligation, that was becoming daily 
more pressing, said, 

“ If you find that you need me, I will.” 

She was alone through the entire evening, for 
Judge Pettibone had engagements outside, which 
deferred the hour she usually had with him, and mad- 
ame and Ellice were flitting back and forth from one 
room to another, busy with their packing. Doro- 
thy’s candles were all lighted, but her book fell time 
and again into her lap as she tried to read ; her eyes 
would seek the fire. As the evening advanced the 
gulf between herself and her friend seemed to open 


248 


Dorothy Delafield. 


wider and wider. Would it ever be the same again ? 
Could she trust Ellice’s constancy in the future 
with the same abandonment, and was this the best 
place for her to study ? Life must be stern for her 
for years to come. She would have to earn herself 
what came to Ellice as a birthright. Powers within 
her, that had been dormant during these months of 
ease, made themselves felt this stormy night. Some 
day it would all come. Better to give than to re- 
ceive. Ah, Dorothy, if you will continue sunny 
and large and sweet, take that for your motto. Re- 
ceive gladly that which is nobly given, but rejoice 
when you have the blessedness to be yourself the 
giver. 

At ten o’clock Dorothy heard Andrew shutting 
up the house. Ellice hurried in, her face radiant 
with hope ; she sat down on the floor and put her 
head in Dorothy’s lap, begging her pardon for all 
the naughty things she had said and done, and 
then in a few minutes she sprang to her feet, saying, 
“ I am so tired,” and went into her own room to 
retire. A few minutes later she thrust her head 
through the door to see Dorothy still sitting before 
the fire. 

“ Come in and sleep with me, Dorothy, this last 
night.” 

‘‘ Perhaps,” responded Dorothy, and as Ellice 
went back into her room she rose and closed the 
door between. She slowly undressed, and putting 
on a wrapper again sat down before the fire. How 
different it would be in Quincy. It would be hard 
to study alone. She would miss the gentle en- 
couragement Judge Pettibone gave her. How she 


Dorothy Delafield. 


249 


would miss the library. The clock on her mantel 
struck eleven. She might just as well stay up an- 
other hour. She would sit and watch her fire die out. 

After a while she felt impressed with the intense 
silence that reigned outside and in. The wind had 
ceased. The occasional falling of a piece of wood 
emphasized the stillness. Suddenly she felt im- 
pelled to turn round. As she did so, she was sure 
she saw the door between her room and Ellice’s softly 
close. Ellice, then, was not asleep either. A surge 
of loving feeling swept through Dorothy's heart. 
She would go in and stay with her this last night. 
Throwing off her wrapper, she raked the ashes over 
the remaining coals, and, filled with a gentle repent- 
ance lest she had been harsh, she opened the door 
and entered Ellice’s apartment. 

“ Ellice,” asked Dorothy, “ do you want me 
still?” 

But Ellice did not reply. 

There she lay, her black curly hair flowing over 
her pillow, her arms thrown over her head, her 
hands looking like marble in the fire-light. 

“ Ellice,” said Dorothy, bending over her, and 
thinking for a minute that she would spring at her, 
as she sometimes did. 

But Ellice was in a heavy, quiet sleep. When 
Dorothy realized this she became frightened. Who 
had been in the room ? Was somebody there now? 

She lay down beside Ellice ; she could not desert 
her. The continued silence at length reassured her, 
and persuading herself that it had been Virginia, she 
summoned all her courage, and going to the hall 
door opened it and looked out. 


250 


Dorothy Delafield. 


It was so still. The old clock chimed out the 
half-hour after twelve. There was an almost im- 
perceptible creak overhead. Thinking it was a 
fancy, she nevertheless lifted her eyes to the gallery 
on the floor above. The merest ray of light was 
visible through one of the doors. Her heart stood 
still when she realized it was the door of the garret 
where Ellice’s treasures were hidden. 

Dorothy all at once forgot herself, forgot fear ; 
she would see who was there. She sped up the 
stairs like a shadow. She crept with bated breath 
to the door. She almost lost her senses when she 
applied her eye to that little crack. 

The doors of the old oak closet hung wide open. 
One of the skeletons had been taken down and lay 
on the floor, its face toward Dorothy, its ghostly 
mouth grinning, its hollow sockets looking more 
horrible than any eyes could have done. The black 
curtain was pulled apart. A square unpaneled 
space was revealed, filled with drawers, which were 
pulled out at various lengths. Beside it, in her 
night dress, her sumptuous figure erect, her hand 
holding up to the light a diamond necklace, Ellice’s 
bunch of keys hanging loosely from her other hand, 
stood madame. A shrewd calculation made her 
face look hard and old. 

Dorothy shuddered as she realized how true her 
instincts had been. She was filled with a dreadful 
horror. She did not dare see any more. She 
would not know it, if madame were going to steal. 
Perhaps it was only curiosity. She turned pale, 
breathless, trembling, and crept, in shaking fear, to 
her room. She would not dare go to Ellice’s, for 


Dorothy Delafield. 251 

madame would return with the keys. She shrank 
under the bedclothes, filled with terrible dread. 

After a time she knew, as well as if she could see 
her, that madame was in the adjoining room. All 
at once she realized that Ellice’s bed would show 
her late occupancy, and the door between. She 
had left it standing open in her fright. 

What if madame should suspect she had been 
seen ? Dorothy felt sick with fear, lest the crime, if 
one had been committed, should be turned against 
her. 

Toward morning she fell into a troubled sleep, 
from which she awoke so colorless, with such heavy 
circles under her eyes, that she drew general atten- 
tion to herself at breakfast. Madame looked so 
rosy, so bright, so sunny, and spoke with such en- 
thusiasm of the fine start for the day, her slumber 
of the night had given her. 

“ I slept so well, too ; I was so tired,” said Ellice. 

“ Didn’t you come into my room last night, 
Dorothy?” she asked ; “ I found the print of some- 
body’s head on the pillow beside me.” 

“ Yes,” Dorothy replied, blushing and flushing 
again till Judge Pettibone, looking at her, asked 
her if she were not well. 

“ I did not sleep well,” she answered the judge, 
and then, “ Yes, Ellice, I went into your room and 
lay down beside you, but I went back to my own 
after awhile.” 

Dorothy said this all so haltingly and awkwardly, 
so unlike her usual calm self, that she arrested the 
attention of the entire family. 

Madame’s eyes contracted for an instant, a sin- 


252 


Dorothy Delafield. 


ister gleam darting from their blue depths. Then 
her face expanded into a smile, she laughed her 
musical little laugh, which Dorothy had learned to 
detest, and said, 

“ Surely our gentle Dorothy cannot have an un- 
easy conscience ? ” 

Dorothy had lost all self-control in speech. She 
looked at madame for an instant with a fascinated, 
horrified stare, and then slowly said, “ No.” But she 
did so as if she felt she were telling a lie. 

Madame knew that in some way Dorothy was 
acquainted with a part or whole of her proceedings, 
but nirnporte. She knew also that by a train of 
circumstances fortunate for her the evidence was 
against Dorothy. In a flash of thought she decided 
to trust to time, which had more than once in the 
past been her best ally. So, smiling sweetly, she 
said, 

“ My dear child, I was only jesting. I should 
lose my faith in humanity if I lost it in you.” 

“ I suppose Miss Dorothy has the same license 
that other mortals have,” remarked Nathan. “She 
may not feel well ; she may have been too tired to 
sleep. I think there has been a great ado about 
nothing. Let me fill your glass with milk, Doro- 
thy.” And Nathan, as he had done once before in 
the past, supported the conversation. 



Dorothy Delafield. 


253 


(SHAPIPBI^ IX. 


M adame and Elllce had departed almost before 
the others were aware. But meanwhile dur- 
ing the late winter morning Dorothy had packed 
her trunk, and was waiting Judge Pettibone’s pleas- 
ure to drive her to her home. Nathan had ex- 
pressed a desire to do this, but the judge insisted 
on taking her himself. 

About three o’clock he asked her if she could be 
ready in an hour. 

“ I am ready now,” she replied ; and both Nathan 
and his father laughed at what they thought her 
eagerness to leave them. 


So an hour later the yellow cutter, with its high 
fan-like back, stood before the door, and Judge Pet- 
tibone tucked Dorothy away in the wide comfort- 
able seat with much tenderness and care. 

“ Y ou are in j ust the right condition to take a cold,” 
he said, as he took his seat beside her and looked 
down into her face, giving her side an extra tuck- 
ing. He felt much as Dr. Withers did, as he 
glanced at its pure sweetness. He wished it be- 
longed to him. 

Nathan leaned against one of the pillars of the 
piazza as they drove away, and was surprised to 
find that Dorothy’s departure seemed of greater 
importance than Ellice’s did. He stood watching 
the retreating sleigh till it was out of sight, and 


254 


Dorothy Delafield. 


then went into the house to finish his arrangements 
for his journey West. Giant sat on his haunches 
before the fire, with the solemn sphynx-like expres- 
sion common to dogs when they feel themselves 
deserted. 

Nathan went into Ellice’s room and looked 
around, and then into Dorothy’s, whose neatness, 
in contrast with the confusion which reigned in 
Ellice’s, brought the two girls vividly before him : 
his sister, luxurious, careless, willful, and generous ; 
Dorothy, neat to primness, so pliant in her sweet- 
ness, and firm in her conscientiousness: the one 
like a midsummer poppy, sumptuous and beguiling; 
the other like a white primrose unfolding timidly 
in mountain air. 

Judge Pettibone asked Dorothy a great many 
questions during that ride home. He had always 
taken her so entirely for granted while she lived 
under his roof, that she wondered if he thought she 
had done any thing wrong. And then the scene 
she had witnessed at midnight sent the blood rush- 
ing to her face and back to her heart, till she grew 
alternately cold and warm. She trembled so vio- 
lently at length that the judge, feeling the disturb- 
ance throughout her whole frame, said, 

“ You are ill, my child.” 

“ I have a chill, sir. I often have these nervous 
chills. I shall be all right when I get to mother.” 

She looked up with a brave attempt at a smile, 
but her eyes were full of tears. Pretty soon she 
recovered herself. The color mounted to her 
cheeks till they were like roses, her eyes sparkled, 
and she began to talk with an abandon and bright- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


255 


ness that charmed the judge. He thought that she 
was, after all, like most girls he had known, a bundle 
of nerves, and that the pleasant excitement of going 
home had made her forget the slight awe she 
always manifested in his presence. 

“ Tell me about your grandparents, Dorothy. 
You are so like your father that I have sometimes 
wondered if the resemblance was so marked through 
more than one generation.” 

“ I shall have to tell you what Cousin Hepzibal 
says about father’s family ; that they have always 
had enough food and clothing to maintain their in- 
dependence, and that my grandfather, my great 
grandfather and his father, were honest God-fearing 
men. That is about all I know of them, all that 
would interest you, sir.” 

“ A good record. Be proud of it ; ” and the judge 
looked at her with approbation. He thought he 
had no need to tell her to be proud of her simple, 
upright ancestors. The slender figure, straight and 
graceful, even as she sat there in the sleigh; the 
strong, dignified pose of her head, always thrown 
slightly back ; the line of her profile, delicate, spirit- 
ual, with a certain alertness, indicating a strong 
vitality — these greatly pleased his aesthetic notion 
of a beautiful girl. 

“ Would you like to know about more of my 
people ? ” 

The judge smiled slightly at this touch of pro- 
vincialism, but in some way thought of Ruth, and 
wondered, too, what ties would eventually prove 
stronger with this young girl, the ties of her people 
or the ties growing out of her choice. “ Happy 


Dorothy Delafield. 


256 

Dorothy ! ” he thought, if they should chance to 
blend harmoniously. 

“ Tell me all you are willing I should know.” 

“ There is nothing that I should conceal,” said 
Dorothy, arching her head again. 

The judge smiled, and looking at her mischiev- 
ously asked, 

“ Are there no black sheep in your family, then ? ” 

Dorothy felt an implied rebuke and was discon- 
certed. but she rallied and replied, 

“None that I know of; criminals, I mean. Do 
you know of any ? ” she asked, regarding him with 
grave inquiry. 

“No, Dorothy;” and the judge smiled reassur- 
ingly. 

But poor Dorothy, suddenly recollecting the 
awful possibilities clustering around her fair name, 
lost her self-possession, and remained silent until 
they reached the long, steep, main street of Quincy. 

It would be a useless task to describe the return 
home of an aching heart, however young that heart 
may be. Men and women of all ages, boys and 
girls with all degrees of youthful experience, have 
turned their faces toward that haven, feeling for 
the time being that all their needs would be met in 
the sympathizing love awaiting them there. But 
the very tenderness of the bond frets the restless 
spirit after a while. Life means unrest! Judge 
Pettibone had a lonely ride back. He missed the 
frank confidence of Dorothy’s eyes. He missed the 
gentle intonations of her musical voice, a familiar 
part of his daily life now for weeks. He dreaded 
stepping into the great hall with the consciousness 


Dorothy Delafield. 


257 


that the young life that had frequented the beau- 
tiful sunny rooms would be missing. He had a 
notion one minute to accompany Nathan, although 
Nathan, in a most unaccountable freak, desired to go 
alone. The next moment he decided to join Ellice, 
but every time he made up his mind to this the 
thought of madame’s ubiquity and excessive polite- 
ness discouraged him. He found the evening mail 
on the table upon entering. There was a letter 
whose angular tremulous superscription led him to 
tear off the envelope with eagerness. It proved to 
be, as he thought, from Dr. Withers. 

Dr. Withers had been absorbed into the life of 
the civil war. Two or three letters, at irregular in- 
tervals, had reached Judge Pettibone. Erratic to an 
extreme, he had, nevertheless, with singular delib- 
eration, adjusted all his business affairs before de- 
parting from Quincy, and, as he had always been a 
man of deeds rather than words, it seemed to him 
the task of reporters and war correspondents to 
give descriptions of the events among which he 
lived, or of the sufferings he was night and day try- 
ing to alleviate. 

His tough wiriness had been proof all winter 
against the exposure of camp life, but when the 
spring rains set in, and damp days alternated with 
frosty ones in abrupt succession, the doctor’s old 
enemy, rheumatism, invaded the walls of his citadel, 
and after a vigorous resistance he capitulated. 

His letter was written from one of the many 
temporary hospitals in Washington. This partic- 
ular one was a rickety old house that had been un- 
occupied for a number of years, and had been re- 
17 


258 


Dorothy Delafield. 


cently applied to its present use. It stood on low, 
marshy ground in the outskirts of the city. From 
the small rattling windows of the doctor’s draughty 
room, the Potomac, muddy and rough and swollen 
with the incessant rains, was the chief object of 
interest. The old doctor measured and estimated 
anew every day the varying breadth of meadow 
submerged, and as the fog would exhale in the 
morning and the golden mists brood in great 
patches on the lower portion after sunset, he recalled 
his theories and knowledge of malarial fevers, and 
calculated his own chances for typhoid. “ Might as 
well be my old body as that of some young man 
with a family.” 

The doctor was a picturesque object in his phys- 
ical ugliness. His glasses were never removed 
from his steely blue eyes, except to wipe them ; 
oftener than not he fell asleep with them still 
perched on his high bony-looking nose. His scant 
supply of hair had grown still less during the win- 
ter of hardship through which he had passed. 
What was left fell in thin bleached locks behind his 
ears and on his neck. His wrinkled face had grown 
thin to emaciation, and had a parched wizened 
look that only his shrewd but kindly smile relieved. 
This smile sometimes illuminated the old man’s 
face as he held his bony yellow hand, with its fine 
little purple veins, between him and the light. 
‘‘You are a desiccated old specimen,” Dr. Withers 
would say, apostrophizing it. He would softly rub 
his stump of a leg between the twinges of rheu- 
matism, and look on its blighted remains with a 
quizzical expression, “You are a faithful old vet- 


Dorothy Delafield. 259 

eran ! ” Then his eyes, with that far-away self-sus- 
tained loveliness one sees in the eyes of the aged, 
would wander idly over the river, the meadows, the 
arch of the unbroken sky, his jaws would fall a 
little apart, and not infrequently the idle philoso- 
phizings of age would fade insensibly into the 
natural imaginations of youth, and the doctor 
would dream away a happy hour in sleep. 

It was at the close of a day spent like this that 
he awoke, aching in every joint, the thin palms of 
his dried old hands hot and cold at the same time, 
a numb, chilly feeling in his back, and with a sense 
of extreme lassitude as he tried to move. 

“ It’s coming,” he said, grimly ; “ I knew it would in 
such a marshy bed. It will make short work of 
this old tinder-box.” 

He made a great effort, as the twilight gathered, 
to reach to the little stand beside his bed for paper 
and pen. The day had quite ended as he closed 
the note he had written to Judge Pettibone. 

The nurse came in just then, and Dr. Withers 
asked her^ with great earnestness, to have the letter 
depart promptly. 

“ It will take about a week, I calculate, for me to 
cross the border line of my reason,” he wrote to 
Judge Pettibone. 

When the judge had finished reading the request 
of the old doctor to come to him without delay, he 
was glad of an excuse to order the horses to be 
ready in an hour. He was glad to spend the even- 
ing in his sleigh on the smooth road between New 
York and his home; glad to find himself the next 
morning on the train bound for Washington. It 


26o 


Dorothy Delafield. 


was evening before he arrived at the dingy, dilapi- 
dated old house whither Dr. Withers’s letter had 
directed him. He was permitted, without delay, to 
go to Dr. Withers’s room. 

“ He is in the first stage of typhoid,” the doctor 
in charge had explained. “ He is too run down to 
survive the attack.” 

Judge Pettibone opened the door of the little 
room the doctor occupied. A tallow candle was 
burning in a tin candlestick on the wooden mantel, 
over which the pipe of a small gassy stove ran into 
the wall. It was very much such a room as the 
doctor would have provided for himself under the 
most favorable circumstances. It was so different 
from the comfort and luxury which the judge had 
always been fond of, that to him, with his aesthetic 
sense always uppermost, nothing could have seemed 
sadder or lonelier. It was the common close to the 
life of most one-sided people. They never have the 
faculty of surrounding themselves with even the 
ordinary amenities of living. But philanthropists 
like Dr. Withers have an instinctive power to 
fathom the needs of others, and even now, on his 
death-bed, the old doctor was most anxious, not 
about himself, but about Dorothy Delafield, who 
had aroused in the old man those paternal instincts 
that had never clustered around a child of his own. 

The judge sat down beside the bed. A smile of 
satisfaction spread over the doctor’s face when he 
awoke and found his friend beside him. They 
talked at intervals about the war, the hospitals, and 
then Dr. Withers inquired about the Delafields. 

The judge told all he knew. Dr. Withers lay 


Dorothy Delafield. 261 

still a few minutes, his fingers picking the counter- 
pane. 

“ I want to make my will, Judge Pettibone.’* 

The judge bowed assent. 

“ I have a curious warm feeling toward that 
daughter of Robert Delafield. I had thought a 
little of leaving Delafield himself a few thousands, 
but he would miss his destiny if I did. I am not a 
believer in the Gospel, but there is a deal of phi- 
losophy in it. One thing it does is to preach the 
wealth of poverty. Delafield is the kind of man to 
dignify a whole poor community like that of 
Quincy. He’s a Moses to that poor narrow little 
place. He has the moral grit for it; he can’t walk 
in a crooked line. The marrow of the goodness of 
generations is in that man. It’s been a real self- 
sacrifice to say to myself, ‘ Robert, you must re- 
main poor for all of me.’ Now, I’m sorry for his 
wife. Quincy is a foreign clime to a nature like 
hers ; but Dorothy will be her satisfaction by and 
by.” 

The doctor made a long pause. 

“ My will must have one clause in it, judge ; so 
binding it can’t be set aside. I depend on you to 
fix it for me. Half of my property must go to the 
immediate use of hospitals in Washington, not on 
marshy ground. The other half shall be Dorothy’s. 
I want you to invest it in 7-20 bonds and in city 
real estate for her. I want the will filed as quietly 
as possible, so she can’t get wind of it. I don’t 
want her to know she has it, or to get control of it 
until she is twenty-four years old. She’ll have 
fought her fight with the world, and she’ll be 


262 


Dorothy Delafield. 


worsted. The millennium for women’s a long way off 
yet. A fine-grained girl, like Dorothy, can’t battle 
always. But she’ll get the experience, and it’ll be 
the experience of a poor girl. I want her to be a 
merciful, gracious woman, and she will be if she 
doesn’t have too long a strain. With such a father, 
and a few years more of poverty, she will be — ” 

The doctor rested a long time. 

“ No matter what the stress is, judge — don’t tell. 
But I would like to leave a thousand dollars with 
Robert Delafield to be used on Dorothy’s education. 
Arrange that, judge. She has set her heart on 
going to that new college for women, being built 
on the Hudson ; but she’ll have to wait too long 
to go to that. Send her to Mentor. 

“ I should judge she had gotten all she could at 
your house. That’s too comfortable a place for 
Dorothy yet. Ask Robert’s advice about it, and 
her mother’s. But they always liked Mentor, and 
it’ll be that much help to Robert. Put in the will that 
the one thousand dollars must be applied to her ed- 
ucation at Mentor. Tell Dorothy,” said the doctor, 
after a much longer pause, “ that I loved her as a 
daughter. Ask her ’’—and the doctor’s lip quiv- 
ered a little — “ to visit my grave sometimes. Put 
me in that old grave-yard on the hill-top at Quincy. 
It’s such a quiet, clean, unmolested place. It’ll be 
convenient for Dorothy to visit me. Tell her I 
left her a thousand dollars because I loved her.” 

The doctor’s face wrinkled with a humorous 
smile. Then, with a shadow stealing over his 
countenance, he said, 

“ I don’t know where I’m going. I wish I had 


Dorothy Delafield. 263 

what Dorothy calls an assurance. There is nothing 
in the Bible against praying for the souls of the 
departed. Suppose you say to Dorothy, sometime, 
indirectly, that you thought Dr. Withers spoke as 
if he would like to have her pray for him after he’s 
gone. It’ll keep me before her, too. I want some- 
body to remember me awhile.” 

The doctor closed his eyes slowly and cautiously 
to keep the tears that had rolled to their brim 
from falling. 

He did not talk any more. He crossed the 
“ border land of his reason ” a day or two after, 
and never returned. But the will had been duly 
signed and sealed. 



264 


Dorothy Delafield. 


(gHAPiPBI^ X. 


HILE Dorothy was identifying herself anew 



with the home duties that her loving heart 


suggested, and Judge Pettibone was attending to 
the last requests of Dr. Withers, Nathan was pur- 
suing his journey farther and farther westward, and 
Ellice and madame were in all the whirl of excite- 
ment they had anticipated. They had two rooms 
at the Brevoort, their windows commanding a bit of 
the Gothic tracing and correct outlines of one of 
Upjohn's best churches, and fronting this, the 
wintry bareness of Washington Square. The 
fountains in the square were silent ; the branches 
of the trees stretched naked and gray in the length- 
ening afternoons. The long rows of tall brick 
houses on the north side of the park displayed 
their white pillars and white marble stoops with 
military precision. Between the first one of these 
and the hotel the stately avenue, along which 
it was Ellice’s delight to drive, began, and con- 
tinued in those days, with its beauty unmarred by 
the desecrating innovations of the present. 

Ellice had been in New York a week, and 
every evening had found her at the opera or 
theater; but a late sleep in the morning, and a 
tHe-a-tHe breakfast with madame had kept the 
roses in her cheeks and the vigor in her step. Their 
plan to isolate themselves had, however, become 
tiresome, and Ellice was declaring one morning her 


Dorothy Delafield. 


265 


intention of sending cards to her friends, when 
madame, who had been glancing over the shipping 
news, exclaimed, 

“ Ciel ! he will be in to-night ! ’’ 

“Who will be in to-night, madame?” 

“A friend — a friend from France,” and madame 
fell into a deep reverie. 

“ Has he ever been in this country before ?” asked 
Ellice, with idle curiosity. 

“ O yes ; he is thoroughly familiar with the 
United States.. He is coming now on official busi- 
ness — but that is a great secret.” And madame held 
up her forefinger as if she had unintentionally re- 
vealed what would be better unspoken. “You 
must not in any way allude to this, unless we are 
quite alone. My friend is a man of great reserve.” 

“ Well, I wish he would come,” said Ellice, a 
little impatiently. “ What is he like, madame?” 

“ He is a man with a history,” and madame’s 
eyes expanded, and her tone was very impressive. 
“ He is a tall, dark man — a very passionate, self- 
willed man.” 

Ellice clasped her hands in delight. 

“ Go on!” 

“ He is a man to whose will every body bends. 
Women are his slaves, and men have been his 
dupes. He has never received a no, and has never 
expected one. Women fall in love with him at 
first sight; but he is ice. He says he is waiting for 
a woman whom to see is to love. Voila — a destiny 
for somebody.” 

“ Why has he not been yours, madame ? ” 

Madame, with all her diplomatic cautiousness, 


266 


Dorothy Delafield. 


had not been able to ward off the encroachments of 
Ellice’s familiarity in these days of constant com- 
panionship. She frowned and shrugged her shoul- 
ders. But presently she smiled, and said, with 
great kindliness of tone, 

“ My destiny was completed before I met him.” 

Nevertheless, all that day she could not conceal 
an eager, happy anxiety. She hastened back to 
the hotel from a matinee, although Ellice wished 
to linger on Broadway. She dressed herself with 
unusual care, softening the lines and coloring of 
her face, making a stray curl here and there in her 
white hair, and finally looked superb in her fairness, 
relieved by an exquisitely fitting dress of black satin. 

Ellice had always enjoyed the sense of mystery 
that hovered around madame, so she only exclaimed, 
because madame had never worn them before, when 
she saw that lady remove from their case a pair of 
fine solitaires and place them in her ears. Madame 
stepped back from the mirror with a complacency 
of expression, as she noticed their effect, that sud- 
denly brought Dorothy flitting across the mirror 
of Ellice’s mind in strange contrast. She then 
took a diamond brooch from its case to place at 
her throat, when Ellice asked to see it. 

“It is a new one, is it not, madame?” Ellice 
asked, carelessly. 

“ Does it look new?” and madame took it back. 
“ These are old family diamonds that I had reset 
in Paris, but the setting is so antique that newness 
did not suggest itself to me.” 

“ The antique is the antique after all,” said El- 
lice, oracularly. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


267 

“ I did not know you were a connoisseur in 
jewels,” said madame. 

“ O, I am not, unless seeing a great many, and 
hearing about them, always has made me one. 
Now I know that these are very fine diamonds ; 
but—” 

Ellice paused just a moment, for she had per- 
fect respect for madame’s judgment. Madame 
waited for her to continue, with interest. 

“ They are too handsome for their setting.” 

Madame’s eyelids contracted suddenly. 

“You are not angry, I hope?” and Ellice, who 
was in one of her best moods, put her arms around 
madame. 

Madame arched her neck, and looked most lov- 
ingly into Ellice’s eyes as she replied, 

“ I am only vexed because my ornaments do not 
please my darling.” 

“ O, put it on and it will look all right,” said El- 
lice, in a most matter-of-fact way. “ See, only the 
stones show in that soft lace. You look like a 
queen ! ” and Ellice stood off, her black eyes shining 
with admiration. 

Madame’s face softened still more under this 
spontaneous tribute. 

“ Now we must make you look just as charming 
as possible.’^ 

“Yes,” laughed Ellice; “ perhaps this French 
mystery coming here to-night may be my destiny.” 

“ Who knows?” said madame. “ He is un parti 
excellent r 

“ Somebody my father would be sure to ap- 
prove of? ” 


268 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ Sure to approve of ! ” and madame repeated 
Ellice’s words with soft emphasis. 

“ Make me splendid with silks and laces and 
flowers, but no jewels. Yours shall be the mature 
and mine the youthful beauty, madame.” 

Ellice coiled her soft thick braids in her neck. 
She arranged the even waves of her black hair on 
either side of her forehead. She rejoiced in her 
beauty as madame was vain of hers. Her dress set 
off to advantage the long lines of her figure ; she 
looked even taller than she was, and it was 
madame’s turn to tell her that she was regal. The 
dark maroon of her gown, with its fall of lace 
about the low neck, the creamy roundness of her 
supple arms softened by the elbow sleeves of black 
lace, and, above all, the dark beauty of her eyes, 
now dancing with mirth, and the next instant sad 
to melancholy, made a face not easy to forget. 

There are moments in men’s lives when they 
may ask a question freely of destiny,” quoted 
madame to Ellice; “ perhaps this is your moment.” 

All the romance in Ellice’s breast was stirred. 
She went into the still unlighted parlor, to one of 
the windows, and drew aside the curtain. A south- 
east wind was sweeping through the trees of the 
park. The gas in the street-lamps flickered as the 
gusts came in rapid succession. Carriages rolled 
by and disappeared in the distance. The hotel 
stage whirled around the corner, and Ellice watched 
the passengers alight. She pressed her face closely 
against the pane as a tall man swung himself out, 
and gave a momentary glance along the front of 
the hotel. 


Dorothy Delafield. 269 

“ He has come, madame,” Ellice cried, turning 
away from the window as madame entered the 
parlor. 

An hour later a porter brought a card, whose 
highly-polished surface displayed a crest, and under- 
neath it the name, Adolph de Vincy. 

There was a look of intense questioning in the 
face of this gentleman, as, a moment later, he 
entered the parlor and sought madame. 

A triumphant affirmation overspread her features 
as she introduced him to Ellice as the Marquis de 
Vincy. 

All the French romances which she had read the 
past winter under madame’s direction grouped 
themselves around this marquis, as she acknowl- 
edged the introduction. 

He bowed over the hand she extended. There 
was the most elegant deference in his manner as he 
placed madame’s chair for her, and in his gaze during 
the second he waited for Ellice to be seated. Ellice 
thought she had never seen so handsome a man. 

His eyes, though black and prominent, were soft 
and commanding. His beard fell in a heavy, glossy 
length, but, closely cut at the sides, showed the 
contour of his cheeks. His mouth was full, but 
very firm. He sat between them on a straight 
chair, one arm thrown over the back of it, the other 
resting idly on his knee. He talked with great 
fluency .and elegance with madame, leaving Ellice 
as a listener for a half-hour ; then, with a “ par- 
don ” to the young lady, whose presence he had 
recognized in the conversation only by an occa- 
sional glance, he asked her many questions about the 


270 


Dorothy Delafield. 


operas and plays she had been attending, and Ellice 
answered slowly, but very correctly and primly. 
His full, soft eyes rested on her face as she spoke. 
They sought the curves of her slender, graceful 
neck ; they glanced along the thick, rich folds of 
her silk gown, and quickly returned to her face, 
and always with an expression as if it were a new 
and pleasing vision. 

For the first time in her life Ellice drank in the 
intoxication of the silent flattery of a man who im- 
pressed her with fear and mystery. She sat with a 
strange feeling of ease and alertness, fascinated to 
an extent that if the Marquis de Vincy had risen 
and gone to the window, or anywhere in the room, 
she would have felt impelled to follow him. She 
had been describing her home to him, in elaborate 
precise French, her eyes fastened on his, and anon 
turned toward the fire, as if that dazzled her less. 

“ Mademoiselle,” he said, suddenly, restoring 
Ellice's gaze to himself, “ shall I describe my home 
to you ? Madame has often been an honored guest 
there.” 

Then followed a description of a weird chateau 
on the borders of Brittany. Ellice followed the 
narrator through parks and forests, through gal- 
leries and chambers, and stood before pictures, and 
in haunted rooms, until, to her fevered fancy, scenes 
and personages from George Sand seemed to 
present themselves almost bodily. She drew a 
long, deep, unconscious sigh when the description 
ended ; she felt a dreamy, restful power, that 
seemed to fill the atmosphere of the room, and yet 
radiate from the presence of the marquis. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


271 


He paused, as if the very force and vividness of 
the description had exhausted his vocabulary. He 
fixed his eyes on the uplifted ones of the attentive 
girl, and gazed into them with a long, earnest, in- 
quiring gaze, warm, ardent, and longing, and Ellice 
unconsciously returned it with a look such as an 
inquiring spirit might wear who was trying to peer 
into a world hitherto unknown to his nature. 

The marquis rose with restrained impetuousness. 
He pushed away his chair. He turned to Ellice, 
and, stepping slightly back, made a profound bow. 
He raised madame’s hand to his lips, kissed her 
finger tips, and withdrew so silently and quickly 
that Ellice looked around the room bewildered. 

A moment later a strange sense of oppression 
and vague fear took possession of her. She got an 
ottoman, and sitting beside madame, rested an 
elbow on her lap, and looked thoughtfully and de- 
murely into the fire. 

Madame drew Ellice’s head against her shoulder 
after a little, and took the girl’s cold hands between 
hers and chafed them gently. They went to bed 
without exchanging many words, and Ellice fell 
asleep immediately ; but all night she was threading 
her way between great bowlders, or tearing her 
skirts on steep staircases, and which all at once 
she found suspended in the clouds. 

It was late when she awoke. Madame had 
dressed and gone out of the room. 

Ellice went to walk in the park. When she re- 
turned she found madame awaiting her with a 
smile of eagerness, and holding an invitation from 
the marquis to drive at three o’clock. 


2/2 


Dorothy Delafield. 


She was radiant with delight. Her enchantment 
of the night before was upon her with renewed force, 
as she sat vis-d-vis to the marquis, rolling rapidly 
over the pavement between the long lines of monot- 
onous brown-stone houses. The new aspect of Cen- 
tral Park, which had fretted her in the past, sped by 
without disturbing her serenity. The sky, the air, 
the very sparrows, as they hopped along the walks 
or upon the snow, seemed instinct with some great 
happy secret. She wished the drive would never 
end. She did not have to say much, for the mad- 
ame and the marquis included her in their conver- 
sation, and appealed to her sufficiently to make her 
feel within the circle of their sympathy. She 
settled back into the soft cushions with that sense 
of youthful irresponsibility that a beautiful girl 
may indulge ; glad, and very conscious that every 
smile she gave him, or the faintest word she spoke 
to him, would receive his instant chivalrous atten- 
tion. She wondered, in a happy, idle way, how 
long madame had known him; and then again she 
thought how very well she seemed to know him. 
Their whole conversation suggested a familiar con- 
tinuous past which they might even have lived 
together. At the same time there was an unvary- 
ing formal respect which the marquis manifested 
for madame, which forbade the next instant the 
thought of any acquaintance not conducted under 
circumstances similar to the present ones. 

But Ellice was too pleased to question much. 
She was only eager to receive all that was offered, 
so long as it was offered in a way to suit even 
the ideals of a Don Quixote. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


273 


The days from this time forward contained an 
elixir of perpetual hope. Ellice alternated between 
girlish enthusiasm over madame’s friend — whose 
presence in some way or another was suggested to 
them morning, noon, and night — and slowly con- 
suming jealousy that madame’s power with him 
seemed unlimited. The young girl was glad, how- 
ever, to see madame more than merely at her ease 
with him. She did not love him. 

Ellice had an impetuous, headlong nature that 
all winter had chafed against the quiet and monot- 
ony of her life. 

Madame, with her cold, lymphatic, sensuous 
nature, or, rather, as some Frenchman has ex- 
pressed it, “ with a voluptuous nature that reason 
had made cold,” had prepared the soil of Ellice’s 
heart, with sedulous assiduity, for just such a quick- 
ening as it was at present receiving. 

Ellice could not realize that her brilliant conver- 
sation, her elaborate dressing, her smiles, her pre- 
occupation with the new friend, were a background 
which madame deliberately made ; and so, led on 
day by day to desire what madame evidently con- 
sidered most desirable, her curiosity piqued by the 
mystery that surrounded the marquis, her impulses 
invariably treated by him with the most reverent 
attention, her inclination gratified in its pride, pas- 
sions, and willfulness, she threw herself with ro- 
mantic precipitation into the fascinations of the 
moment, and courted from opportunity an intimacy 
she knew would be impossible under her father’s 
observation. 

Madame, delighted, fanned the fire that had 
18 


2/4 Dorothy Delafield. 

kindled more quickly than she had even dared to 
hope. 

In a few days there was in the background of 
Ellice’s consciousness a perception that madame 
made opportunities for the marquis to meet her. 
She was vaguely, desperately conscious that if 
madame had not been thus indulgent she would 
have been open to any secret attention the marquis 
would have proffered. She knew that she lived in 
the thought of meeting him, and soon, with the 
self-analysis she had always played with, she knew 
that her attachment was as fully formed as if she 
were the aggressive lover. 

This latest, reckless manifestation of her nature 
was met, however, more than half way ; but with 
such a reserve of something final that trembled 
for expression, yet was forcibly restrained, that 
Ellice grew daily in a fever of mingled apprehen- 
sion and infatuation. She finally dropped all pre- 
tense of concealing from madame her preference 
to entertain, unaided, the Marquis de Vincy. 

When this became plainly evident to Madame 
Rameau, she withdrew from attending Ellice, and 
lent a sympathizing, open ear to her irrepressible 
confidence. 

“ You must not fix your affections unsought on 
the Marquis de Vincy,” at length said madame to 
Ellice. “ Remember what I have told you about 
the fate of other women.” 

Ellice blushed with anger and shame at the 
warning, but replied, 

“ He does love me ; and if he does not, he shall ! ” 

Madame leaned back against the cushions of her 


Dorothy Delafield. 275 

chair and gazed at Ellice through her downcast 
lids. 

“ But your father ? ” 

‘‘ My father! He will be indulgent enough. He 
always has allowed me my own way ; why should 
he not do so now ? Why should my father object ? ” 

“ The marquis is foreign, and you Americans are 
so severe against foreigners — Americans like your 
father. He would never forgive me, even if he 
would you. Let us go home.” 

“I shall not go home. To whom should I go? 
You would not have me go to Dorothy, and with 
father and Nathan both away, that great empty 
house would make me shiver.” 

Ellice had been talking in this vehement way 
while dressing to go with the marquis to see 
Romeo and Juliet. Her cheeks were in a brilliant 
glow when he arrived, and reddened to a still 
richer color as he looked at them in the white set- 
ting of her bonnet. 

The glance of his black eyes was like a fire in 
her bones. She felt such elasticity in her step as if 
she could fly the next moment. It seemed to her, 
as they descended the broad, softly carpeted ^airs 
leading to the street, that it would be delightful 
never to return. A whiff of night air, silent and 
soft, struck her as the great fan of the storm-door 
was opened ; it was as gentle as the breath of st 
voice, but its coolness added a peace to her delight 
that did not lessen its ecstasy. 

When the marquis offered his arm to conduct 
her to the carriage her impulse was to let her hand 
grasp it with the force of an embrace, but she 


276 


Dorothy Delafield. 


walked across the pavement with the fever in her 
heart unexpressed, and the sense of a pleasure that 
was at once too long and too short. 

New York looked to her as it had never done 
before, as they drove through faintly lighted streets 
and into the evening calm that makes Broadway 
like the ghost of itself. The broad thoroughfare 
seemed unnaturally wide ; the stores loomed into 
gigantic proportions ; the sky looked as far away 
as heaven. 

The marquis was so near that her consciousness 
of him was clearer than that of her own identity. 
He was being, action, the answer to all her past 
queries of life. “ Give him up ! Never ! ” 

As Ellice thought this, felt this, rather, she turned 
toward him with wide-open, glowing eyes. He 
was looking at her as if he had been doing so a 
long while. He bent over, and as a broad flow of 
light fell athwart her face kissed her. 

She held out her hand to him as if she had been 
suddenly struck with blindness. He took it and 
folded it firmly and softly between his. 

Ellice felt a queer security, as if under a shelter, 
but* a shelter like that of a great shadowing rock, 
threatening to fall any moment and crush her. 

She did not have any real sense of the theater 
after they had reached it. The keen exquisite sen- 
sitiveness that tingled every nerve when they 
started had been succeeded by a dull, amazed 
passiveness over something consummated. She 
did not feel at all. That kiss had made a gulf as 
wide as death and as impossible between her entire 
past and the present. Her consciousness of the 


Dorothy Delafield. 


277 


marquis was no less ; she had in that half-hour of 
intensity, for the time being, exhausted all feeling. 
But she shivered like a leaf, and while her cheeks 
glowed her forehead was like marble and her hands 
and feet cold to numbness. All through the even- 
ing the scenes of the play were like the accom- 
paniment only to her preoccupation, but they gave 
her opportunity to rest sufficiently to enjoy her 
ride home under the spell of the same unreality, 
and to bid the Marquis de Vincy good-night in a 
great expectation that to-morrow would set its 
seal on the mute avowal of the evening. 

When morning came Ellice awoke with a sense 
of languor to which she had been a stranger here- 
tofore. She yielded to a desire to be still, and lay 
idly watching madame flit back and forth between 
their rooms. She watched the maid build the fire 
in the grate, listened to the order for her breakfast, 
gazed at the houses in front of the hotel, and then 
at the bit of blue above them. Her happiness had 
made her very tired, and she yielded to the fatigue 
as part of that very happiness. 

While she was thinking of the great and sudden 
change that had taken place within her, madame en- 
tered the room smiling, and carrying a bouquet of 
red roses. 

Ellice held out her hand before madame reached 
the bed. 

“ Did he send them ? ” 

Madame nodded, still smiling, and Ellice took 
the roses in both hands and buried her face in them. 

“ Here is a note,” and madame extended an en- 
velope bearing the De Vincy crest. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


278 

Ellice laid the roses on her pillow beside her 
face and opened it with flushing eagerness. It was 
very formal, simply requesting her company for a 
drive the following morning. Her eyes filled with 
tears. 

“He will not come to-day, madame.” 

“ I am very glad, for your sake ; you can lie still 
all day, and this evening I will provide for your 
amusement. You have never been tired like this 
before,” and madame bent over and kissed her. 
“ I feel a little anxious about you. I have an ap- 
pointment down town with an old, old friend, but 
I want you to promise me that you will not rise till 
I return. I will come back as soon as I can, but I 
will not go unless you promise.” 

“ I promise,” said Ellice, “ if you will give me a 
good novel. Shall you be back to lunch ? ” 

“ I hope so,” but ring for yours if I am not home 
at the usual hour.” 

Madame seemed suddenly to be in a hurry to 
go, but Ellice did not notice this haste, with her 
note in one hand and the roses in the other. She 
was glad, on the whole, to be alone. 

Madame took her coupe and was soon rattling 
through the streets, and down town to the west 
side of the city. She entered one of the narrow 
streets whose ancient dignity was indicated only 
by the more ornate character of its door-ways, and 
the breadth and solidity of the houses. The center 
of the street had the half-clean, half-neglected look 
which New York blocks wear when they have begun 
to degenerate and yet still maintain a semirespect- 
ability. She paused before a brick house, all of 


Dorothy Delafield. 


279 


whose windows were either carefully closed or 
draped, and surveying it a second before alighting, 
she nodded her head in a relieved way, and then 
got out and ascended the steps. 

The bell was answered after a long interval by an 
old-fashioned woman, with a thin straight figure, a 
neutral face, with hair and eyes and skin all of a 
color. She held the door half-open until madame 
inquired for the Marquis de Vincy. Then she 
threw it wide open, but closed it softly as soon as 
her caller was within. She preceded madame, with 
a slight stoop, and opened the white-painted door 
of what she called the parlor. She made a feint of 
dusting a very clean chair with her apron, and 
placed it a little farther out in the room for her 
guest. 

What a cold proper little room it is to be a wit- 
ness for the preliminaries of so much wickedness,” 
thought madame, as she shrugged her shoulders. 
She gazed at the clean white curtains ; at the square 
piano ; at the green rep iete-d-tke, cutting off a 
corner ; at the half-dozen chairs, covered with the 
same vivid color, placed at rigid intervals. “ A room 
that is so much used to appear so little used. But 
what a sly little room it is.” All this passed in a 
moment through madame’s mind as she inquired 
for the Marquis de Vincy. 

“ He is up stairs ; will madame go up stairs ? ” 
and the small woman, in her faded-calico dress, rose 
and clasped her hands and made a wry, puckered, 
wintry little smile. 

“ Yes.” 

The little old woman went up the stairs like a 


28o 


Dorothy Delafield. 


cat ; she opened the door of the rear room, knock- 
ing as she opened it. 

The marquis’s step was heard coming from the 
adjoining room, and madame, dismissing her guide, 
entered and closed the door. 

She was beautiful and repulsive as she stood 
there in the middle of that square room. Her eyes 
were expectant, triumphant, malicious, as she held 
out both her hands to the marquis. 

“She is ready to do any thing; and there is no 
time to be lost. Judge Pettibone will be in New 
York in three days, and wishes his daughter to re- 
turn home with him immediately. He telegraphed 
to me this morning, but I did not tell Ellice. She. 
would drop down from her illusions a little. She 
must be the Marquise de Vincy to-morrow or not 
at all.” 

Madame laughed a succession of rippling, silvery 
laughs, and the marquis, looking down on her from 
his great height, presently threw his head back and 
laughed also. 

“ What a managing little mamma you are, to be 
sure! You are sure about her property, sure about 
the receipts for the diamonds ? It would be an 
ugly thing for a man with my debts to be hampered 
with a wife who is sure to be a vixen when the 
spell is broken.” 

“ I have told you a hundred times that I am 
sure. This is the last desperate game I will play 
for you, Pierre ; if you shrink this time — ” 

“ Diable ! It is an awful resort. That girl will 
be a Pythoness when she discovers her mistake.” 

“ II importe ! Marry her ! Marry her to-morrow. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


281 


Bring her here till Wednesday, and on Wednesday 
— and madame laughed, lifted her head and her 
eyes shone “ back to la belle France /” She placed 
her hand dramatically on her pocket. “ It will be 
full of dollars, bright gold dollars to-night. This 
bosom ” — and she clasped her hands on her breast — 
“ is resplendent with the hidden glory of diamonds 
that shall be transmuted into all that is needful in 
Paris. Ellice comes into possession of her fortune 
in June, and between nowand then, you and I” — 
madame set her even white teeth together, her lips 
parted and showed them grinding on one another — 
“ We can crush her ! ” 

“ Have you arranged with the minister?” 

“ All — every thing is arranged. Bring her to the 
church on Wednesday, and you will find every 
thing and every one in readiness ; only dismiss 
your carriage at the restaurant. I will have a car- 
riage in readiness for you after the ceremony. 
Then come here.” 

The marquis bent down and kissed madame 
chivali ously. 

“ And when is she to make acquaintance with 
her mother-in-law? ” 

“ As soon as she is a daughter-in-law. The 
sooner the better 1 Have I not advised her to go 
home? she cannot reproach me.” 

“ She will reproach you. She will find the key 
to the whole story from the conclusion. But 
7iimporte I She will be the wife of a Frenchman.” 

A long conversation followed between the mother 
and son. The morning was spent when madame 
descended the neat prim staircase and went away. 


282 


Dorothy Delafield. 


She drove to Delmonico’s with the marquis, and 
sat an hour over a dainty lunch. Then she entered 
her coupe again and drove to a diamond broker’s 
in Maiden Lane. 

Madame rode over those two miles of Broadway, 
reviewing the cumulative value of a good reputa- 
tion. She had been able to convey Ellice to New 
York, because, let the judge have what instinctive 
misgivings he might, he had satisfied himself that 
she had been for years a responsible teacher and 
woman. She had thus been able to bring the full 
force of her personality to bear upon a passionate 
and willful but otherwise sweet and high-minded girl. 

There was a sort of reflected tenderness in 
madame’s sensuous nature, which made her see 
clearly the moral ugliness of her position. She 
would rather have had ELlice older, more au courant 
with the corrupt ways of the world. She was too 
much like one of the breezes starting from the 
Quincy hills; they had such tonic properties that 
it would take long to load them with the miasmas 
of the foul districts over which they would finally 
pass. There was such a readjustive strength in 
Ellice. She always rebounded so far, and madame 
dreaded the force of such a power. Nevertheless 
she herself had a son whom she loved. He was 
poor, and so was she. What capacity for enjoyment 
both had ! Their pleasure, much of it, would be 
pain to a girl brought up as Ellice had been ; but 
she had the capacity for Bohemianism, and after a 
while their life would be hers. Ellice’s fortune, into 
which she would come very soon now, would be a 
resource for them all. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


283 


Madame clasped her plump hand tightly over 
the case she held. It had not been an easy thing 
for her to wait for the broker to identify her before 
he purchased her stones. His letter, telling her that 
his inquiries had been satisfactory, were a weight off 
her mind. Very soon now, in a half-hour, those 
diamonds would be transmuted into dollars. There 
was nothing then to keep her from Paris, the home 
of her heart. 

She carried herself with more than her usual 
majesty under the consciousness of near success. 

The broker received her with reverent suavity 
and handled the jewels with the pleasure of a con- 
noisseur who recognizes more than usual intrinsic 
value. He sympathized with madame over part- 
ing with such rare family relics, but madame 
shrugged her shoulders and said that they were a 
care that she was glad to rid herself of. 

All the same, she heaved a sigh under her rich 
cloak as she thought of what an embellishment 
they would be to her beauty. She could hardly 
conceal her eagerness as the broker handed her his 
check. She stood and folded the check deliber- 
ately and placed it in a little hand-bag, much as if 
it were an every-day occurrence for her to place 
large sums there. Then she bowed with a grand 
air and withdrew, but heaved a long and audible 
sigh, after shutting her coupe door as she hurried 
toward the Brevoort. 

“The last time, thank Heaven ! ” said madame to 
herself, as she ascended the stairs of the hotel. 

Ellice’s dreams had shortened the day. She sat 
in a crimson wrapper in an arm-chair before the fire 


Dorothy Delafield. 


284 

when madame entered, who held out both hands to 
her and imprinted a fervent kiss on either cheek. 

“ How well you look, my dear ! I hope the day 
has not been tedious.” 

“ On the contrary,” said Ellice. “ Still I am de- 
lighted to see you. I have had enough of my own 
society.” 

Ellice rose early the next morning. She surprised 
madame from a sound sleep, as she moved about 
the room. She insisted on ordering the breakfast 
a half-hour earlier than usual, so as to be sure to be 
in ample time for her drive. Long before the ap- 
pointed hour she stood before the fire, or wandered 
to the window, her face full of wistful anxiety, a 
feverish brightness in her eyes. 

Madame surveyed her, in her close-fitting gray 
cloth coat, her complexion softened and deepened 
in the gray bonnet with a touch of pink, that 
flared in a sheltering rim around her face. 

In spite of herself, madame felt a flash of 
motherly pride in the anticipatory possession of 
such a girl. She felt, all the same, a defensive thrill 
as the thought of the scene, so carefully planned 
for a few hours later, rose in her mind. All at 
once she realized how completely the final part of 
her scheme depended on her mental and moral 
diagnosis of Ellice. But this was not the time for 
thought. Nothing but action now remained. 

Ellice stood at the window when a knock at 
their parlor door announced the marquis. 

The color wavered in her cheeks, but her eyes met 
his with a frankness of welcome that was so self-ab- 
negating and so large, that a good man would have 


Dorothy Delafield. 285 

experienced a new joy in what awaited him. But 
eyes black and gray and blue and brown had gazed 
responsively into his, and whatever capacity for emo- 
tion the marquis may have possessed in his youth, 
he had long ago permanently exhausted feeling. 

He recognized Ellice’s beauty, but as for the 
purity and integrity and sweetness of her childhood 
and girlhood, these were the products of a senti- 
mentality in any woman which contact with the 
world speedily destroyed. He had no compunc- 
tions in plucking this fresh flower, in placing the 
first blackening print on snow ; as well himself as 
any body else. 

He advanced toward Ellice with the vitality of 
step and presence which she felt but could not 
analyze. She took his hand and said, “ Good-morn- 
ing,” quietly, but with a low, rich intensity of voice 
which satisfied madame. She allowed herself, a few 
minutes later, to be assisted into the victoria in a 
passive, happy manner, that evinced a calmness 
that would have sat well on a matron of thirty. 
She was in a frame of mind that absolutely pre- 
cluded the possibility of disappointing surprises. 

It was a gray day, soft and still. A damp, cool 
atmosphere brooded over the city, and in the long 
vistas of the avenues a mist hung that had a golden 
tinge in the strong morning light. There was a 
promise of glorious sunshine later. Off on the 
rivers the fog-horns sounded. Their half-musical, 
blatant echoes was a subtle suggestion of returning 
spring in the dry, gray arms of the trees ; in the 
patches of youthful green in sheltered nooks. The 
day was one of those so typical of New York, warm 


286 


Dorothy Delafield. 


yet cool — one even gray tone over the whole sky, 
but an exhilarating tonic in the salt air that crept 
in without the flutter of a breeze from the sound 
and the ocean. 

Ellice sank back against the firm but yielding 
cushions of the victoria ; she looked furtively, with 
a glad, proud glance, now and then at the hand- 
some face beside her. All her dreams were realized. 
Romance, beauty, daring, and tenderness had 
blended into one glad reality. Alas ! this was not 
the first time that a woman’s affectionate nature 
was so large and so ideal that it shaped its own idol 
out of wood and stone and then bowed down and 
worshiped it. 

Ellice knew nothing of the city as they drove 
through it out toward one of the highways leading 
into Westchester County. She was conscious, in a 
dim way, of tall houses and spires and stretches of 
gray country ; but they were all like the prelude to 
some beautiful song. Something was in this day 
sweeter than she could imagine. She was so elated 
that the most unexpected circumstances, the 
strangest speeches, would have harmonized with her 
mood. The carriage seemed to roll through the 
air. The horses seemed winged. 

By and by the marquis turned in his seat and 
looked at Ellice. He took her hand. She let it lie in 
his in the fullness and peace of her happiness. Her 
trust in that hour was perfect. Her consciousness 
of his presence was such that she felt drowsy, as one 
does when one is on the border land between sleep- 
ing and waking, and while the strangest dreams go 
coursing unrestricted through the brain. 


Dorothy Delafield. 287 

“ Ellice,” said the marquis, his voice full of gen- 
tlest, tenderest inquiry, “ do you love me? ” 

Ellice looked into his eyes presently, but lifted 
her lids as if they were very heavy. 

“Yes.” 

The marquis folded her hand more closely. They 
rode on a quarter of a mile farther. 

“ Do you love me enough to marry me, Ellice ? ” 
asked the marquis. 

“ Yes,” said Ellice again, but with a grave won- 
derment in her tone — much as if the question were 
unnecessary. 

The marquis looked at her again, as if another 
question trembled on his lips. She comprehended 
it so far that she presently said, 

“ What do you wish further? ” 

“ I must sail for France, Ellice, on Wednesday — 
day after to-morrow, and I would like to take my 
wife with me ; would that be possible ? ” 

A multitude of thoughts rushed in on Ellice. 
There was a strange vividness in them which she 
recalled afterward. Her father, Nathan, and sweet 
Dorothy rose before her as if she saw them. It 
would be mean leaving them all behind. But they 
were — earth, and the marquis was — heaven. She 
looked into his face again, her eyes were swimming 
in tears, yet joyful : 

“ I will be married to you ! ” 

“ Tq-day ? ” 

“ To-day.” 

They drove on and on in silence — to Ellice, the 
last golden silence that she would ever remember. 
They came to an old-fashioned inn — famous in 


288 


Dorothy Delafield. 


those days among New Yorkers. They sat leisurely 
over a dinner that was served to them at noon. 
Then they wandered in a little wood near by that 
nestled on the sunny side of a hill. To the west 
and east a vague mist hung over the Hudson and the 
East River. The fallow land, the patches of spring 
wheat, the slumberous, fitful murmur of a light 
breeze in the trees, the moist, earthy smell pre- 
vading the air, soothed her senses. The sun came 
out all at once ; the mists gathered themselves to- 
gether and rolled and curled slowly and voluptuously 
up the sides of the hills on the distant Jersey shore ; 
the white houses dotting the landscape shone in 
the sudden misty brightness like calcium ; the sharp 
spire of a little church, a half-mile away, seemed all 
at once like a star-tipped needle, and Ellice followed 
its aspiration, until her eyes became suffused with 
the brightness of the upper air. She always carried 
with her afterward on such days a sense of unreality, 
the remembrance of an ecstasy that could never 
return. 

They descended the low hill on which they had 
been standing and came out on the high road. 
They met an occasional pedestrian, who glanced at 
them with curiosity, for they belonged as little to 
the scene as nothing accorded with the intense ela- 
tion of spirit Ellice felt. If she had had wings, her 
sense of buoyancy and lightness could not have 
been greater. 

A turn of the road brought the little church sud- 
denly very near. Its door was open. 

“ Let us go in,” said the marquis. 

Ellice followed him through the narrow gate and 


Dorothy Delafield. 289 

up the flagged walk, listening, as if to a weird, low 
tune, to the whisper of the wind in the cedars that 
stood in clumps on the sward. She had always 
been fond of penetrating the interiors of buildings; 
and from force of habit she looked mechanically 
around. 

It was a cozy, quiet, trim structure ; the ceiling 
was crossed and recrossed with supporting oak 
arches ; on either side were narrow stained-glass 
windows ; before them were an altar and chancel in 
dull blues and reds, and high above it, in gold letters. 

The Lord reigneth ; blessed be his name for ever 
and ever.” 

As they stood idly before the altar, hand in 
hand, the organist came in through the open door, 
and advanced with a loud step, and a swinging, 
joyous gait. 

The marquis turned to him as he approached and 
asked why the church was open. 

“ For a wedding.” 

The marquis turned toward Ellice. Her eyes 
responded to the sudden question in his. 

“ This will be the happiest, merriest wedding our 
little church has ever known,” said the organist, 
sliding the bench before his instrument and rubbing 
his handkerchief over his forehead. “ A beautiful 
story of love, opposition, and faithfulness.” 

The organ-boy who had been crouching behind 
a projection began to blow, the wind filled the pipes, 
the young organist drew forth the first strains of 
Beethoven’s grand march, to which so many feet 
have walked with greater happiness or first misery. 
And Ellice drew a long breath, for all at once she 
19 


290 


Dorothy Delafield. 


felt as if she would suffocate. She had no intention 
of withdrawing. She did not question the conse- 
quences in detail ; but she felt the future rising be- 
fore her like a mountain of inquiry, and she knew 
that she could offer no answer but the absorbing 
passion that possessed her being. 

The door of the vestment room opened and the 
rector of the church that madame and Ellice were 
in the habit of attending in New York came out. A 
look of passing recognition flitted over his face as 
he glanced at the couple in the altar. Then advanc- 
ing, and after the usual greetings, he inquired : 

“ Are you friends of the young people whom I 
expect to marry shortly ? ” 

“ No,” said the marquis, with much calmness, 
“ but we have decided to ask you to marry us also.” 

Ellice looked into the rector’s face with a half- 
frightened but determined look, as he began to put 
the usual questions. 

“ I am motherless,” was Ellice’s answer to one 
question, and her face grew grave and tremulous, 
and that of the rector anxious, as she made this 
statement. 

With a nervous swallow, she went on to tell how 
her father had always allowed her to have her way, 
to dwell on his absence, and the impossibility of 
obtaining his consent in time to allow her to accom- 
pany the marquis. 

The rector began to inquire for the marquis’s 
credentials. 

If you will step aside with me a few moments, 
I can arrange every thing to our mutual satisfaction, 
I feel sure.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


291 

The rector took the marquis into the vestment 
room, where they remained so long that Ellice be- 
came frightened; but they finally appeared, a 
sparkle in the black eyes of the marquis, a look of 
gravity and anxiety on the face of the rector. 

The spectators had already began to assemble for 
the wedding ; the strains of the organ grew stronger 
and more triumphant. 

The blood had mounted into Ellice’s cheeks and 
her eyes shone with unusual brilliancy. The marquis 
led her to a pew, and when they were seated, whis- 
pered, 

“We are to be married after this other couple. 
There will be witnesses enough to make it bind- 
ing,” thus answering the one question which had 
come to the surface in the assent which Ellice had 
otherwise so unqualifiedly given. 

That long waiting was a terrible strain on Ellice’s 
nerves. She felt her strength oozing from her in 
that first silence which precedes the marriage cere- 
mony. Her heart stood still when the rector said, 
in grave tones, 

“ Let him now speak, or forever hold his peace.” 

The marquis folded her hand more closely in his 
as he felt her tremble, and she gained assurance 
from the warm, close grasp. 

The relief from suspense was no less awful when 
she mechanically ascended into the altar and stood, 
with bowed eyes, before the rector. She had been 
idly thinking, as if in a dream, of the loneliness of 
being given by a stranger to the man she loved ; 
and yet she did not feel lonely. Tears of relief, 
nevertheless, that some one was there, came to her 


292 


Dorothy Delafield. 


eyes when the rector, on asking, “ Who giveth this 
woman to this man ? ” was answered in the soft and 
mellow tones of madame’s voice. For madame was 
there, in her rich beauty, awing the curiosity of that 
little country gathering by the regality of her 
bearing. 

Madame had wisely reasoned, at the last minute, 
that if accident had arranged to Ellice’s mind such 
a combination of helpful circumstances, accident 
could also bring it to pass that she should be pres- 
ent at the ceremony, and should give, with her own 
hands and lips, an heiress to her impoverished son. 

This dramatic turn was visibly a surprise to the 
marquis, who could, nevertheless, only accept her 
presence ; but it deposited a little thought in 
Ellice’s mind that germinated too quickly for their 
general comfort. 

Madame had failed in her usual sagacity, forget- 
ting that a girl like Ellice could temporarily believe 
all things from the marquis because of her love for 
him, but would be correspondingly critical of others. 

A vague suspicion lurked in Ellice’s mind which 
she tried in vain to dispel. 

The comfortable, close carriage that stood before 
the inclosure that surrounded the little church gave 
it a coloring that deepened as she mechanically took 
her seat in it, the marquis beside her, madame, 
radiant and talkative, opposite. 

How much she would have preferred to walk in 
the breezy air back to the little inn, and, since she 
had hazarded every thing, to have conveyed the 
secret, wonderful with delightful meanings, to her- 
self, in her own way, to madame’s ear. She did 


Dorothy Delafield. 


293 


not like to have her secret stolen from her. She 
did not like to suspect that the marquis had made 
madame a confident of hopes which she herself 
had not confirmed. Thus, the exhilarating strain 
of hours, under which she had been able to abso- 
lutely banish anxious thought, changed to great 
physical depression, and her drowsy brain felt as if 
it would go wild with the surmises that all at once 
surged through it. 

Madame watched, with covert anxiety, the fretful- 
ness, half manifest, in the short answers Ellice gave 
to her flow of congratulation and tenderness, but, if 
Ellice would not break away from them before they 
were safely on the steamer, on the morrow, the 
girl’s suspicions and reserve were of little moment. 

She regretted that she had not taken the precau- 
tion to stop at the little inn and have the marquis 
appear to dismiss the victoria that Ellice and he 
had driven out of the city in. Like all selfish nat- 
ures, she had planned the approaches to a con- 
summation with the greatest care, and with the 
coarseness inherent in great selfishness she had not 
dreaded the awkwardness of slightly premature de- 
nouements. Madame was never ashamed of being 
considered selfish ; she was often vexed to have the 
selfishness discovered before it had accomplished its 
ends. Long before they reached the city her tact 
had led her to treat Ellice as if she were greatly 
fatigued and to relapse into a discreet silence. She 
intimated, in an incidental way, that she would be 
glad to know their plans ; and the marquis told her 
that he would take Ellice to a quiet house in the 
city, but would see her on the morrow. 


294 Dorothy Delafield. 

“ When does our steamer sail ? ” asked Ellice, 
suddenly, her dark eyes fixed on madame. But 
madame looked, with surprised inquiry, at the mar- 
quis, who briefly answered, 

“ At noon.” 

“ Madame,” said Ellice, “ will you have my trunk 
packed and sent where my husband shall direct, and 
I will see you before we go ? ” 

“ My dear child, I will anticipate all your needs.” 

The carriage rolled on, and Ellice noticed, with 
painful minuteness, the jolt from every stone or rut 
in the road. She clung to her love and tried to 
bury herself in the supreme trust to which she had 
voluntarily abandoned herself; but there was some- 
thing in the background. The very stillness was 
full of meaning. The warm, firm hand of the mar- 
quis seemed to scorch her. She all at ‘once with- 
drew into a corner of the carriage and closed her 
lids over her dry, hot eyes. 

Madame and the marquis exchanged glances and 
each gave a defiant shrug. 

When they reached the Brevoort, madame kissed 
Ellice tenderly and lingeringly, and merely asking 
how early she should send Ellice’s trunk to their 
apartment, she bade the marquis good-bye, and 
entered the hotel to finish her own packing. 

She decided to go to the steamer that night, 
dreading the possible publicity from the morning 
papers, and thus, in the haste with which final ar- 
rangements, no matter how long foreseen, are gener- 
ally completed, she banished from her thought the 
revelations that must soon be made. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


295 


^HAPIPEI^ X. 



R. WITHERS’S requests were carefully com- 


plied with by Judge Pettibone. He was laid 


to rest on the top of the windy hill in Quincy, in 
the grave-yard where many of his friends among the 
poor slept peacefully. 

Dorothy felt glad, as she stood beside his open 
grave, listening to the rustle in the dried leaves of 
an old oak that spread its fatherly branches over a 
score of humble mounds, that her aged friend had 
made his last home where she could often visit him. 

It gave her a strange surprise that, loving him as 
much as she did, she did not have a sorrier feeling 
about his departure. Years after she became only 
too familiar with the sensation of relief we expe- 
ience when our beloved rest from hard labor, un- 
compensated affliction, and that train of heart dis- 
asters as long as life, that waste the body and con- 
sume vitality. 

Quincy was so different to her from what it had 
been when it was the scene on which all her ex- 
periences were projected. During the first week of 
her return she hugged the fancy that it was a place 
she had never seen before. She gained in this way 
a more vivid picture of its local coloring ; the old 
became new and interesting to piquancy. She also 
indulged her imagination in the belief that the life 
she had come from, with her beloved in it as her 
companions, was the one to which she must inevi- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


296 

tably return. It was only in accordance with the 
fitness of things. The close perception of the 
romantic unfitness of things and persons kept in 
juxtaposition for a life-time was still remote from 
Dorothy’s mind. 

Keenly conscious of missing a great deal of which 
once she had been ignorant, and ashamed that the 
simplicity and plainness of her home seemed sadly 
prosaic, she threw herself heart and soul into every 
imaginable thing that might make her a minister of 
love. Her conscience goaded her on, holding be- 
fore her reflective mind the pleasures which she 
had tasted as forbidden fruit. In her secret soul 
Dorothy sighed for the flesh-pots of Egypt, as rep- 
resented by the comfort and luxury that Ellice had 
left behind in youthful disdain ; and Ellice, in the 
few pauses of thought she gave her home, thanked 
her for taking her from the monotony of such a life. 

Mrs. Delafield felt elated over Dorothy’s winter 
from home. Her pride was gratified when she 
walked through the crooked, rough, and irregular 
streets, as she saw the impulsive tribute paid by 
many a glance, half-critical and half-admiring, to 
Dorothy’s vigorous and yet delicate beauty. Thus 
far all her hopes had been met ; thus far this 
daughter had walked in a straight line toward the 
accomplishments of her wishes. Mrs. Delafield had 
a superstitious belief in bad or good luck attending 
individuals. She had unconsciously strengthened 
this notion by interpreting the most trivial circum- 
stances connected with Dorothy by turning them 
in her mind until, to her entire satisfaction, they 
betokened either present or future good. 


Dorothy Delafield. 297 

There was an anxious look in Dorothy’s eyes 
during these first days at home that her mother did 
not notice ; and Elizabeth, in her sound, dreamless 
slumber, did not know that Dorothy lay awake 
beside her, breathing even with loving restraint lest 
she should awaken her younger sister, to whom her 
affectionate nature turned with quickened ardor 
after their separation. 

At the end of a fortnight Robert stood before the 
stove one bright, cold March afternoon, observing 
Dorothy, who lingered in the full-tide of the west- 
ern light that came from above the hills beyond the 
mill hollow and flooded her, her book, and the 
cheerful sitting-room with glory. 

Dorothy was leaning against the side of a window 
apparently reading. 

As the strong light fell upon her face Robert 
noticed the blue, transparent, heavy look of her 
downcast lids. There were hints of lines about her 
mouth. A wistful sadness seemed impressed upon 
her features. Life had always been a sober reality 
to the little family, so that sobriety of manner in 
Dorothy only identified her with the atmosphere 
of her home. Her whole attitude, however, ex- 
pressed melancholy. 

“ Dorothy,” said he, at length, but with anxious 
abruptness, “ are you sad about any thing?’ 

Dorothy looked up with a start ; her book fell to 
the floor ; her eyes filled with tears, as her father 
crossed the room and put his arm around her. 

“ What is it, daughter?” 

“ O ! ” and Dorothy, with such a weary sigh, put 
her cheek against Robert’s. “ I have such an un- 


298 Dorothy Delafield. 

happy secret, father, and it troubles me more and 
more.” 

Robert held her off from him a second, but only 
a second. Then he folded her in his arms with 
additional tenderness, but asked : 

“ Why have you kept it from me so long ? ” 

“ It can only do harm, I am afraid,” and Doro- 
thy drew another tired but smothered sigh. 

“Is it about yourself?” asked Robert, anxious 
now with that loving suspicion which always makes 
a good parent watchful for the mistakes of inno- 
cence. 

“ I am in it, father, fatally in it ; but it is not 
that. It is its dreadfulness, father,” gasped Dorothy. 
“ I am suffering as a thief must suffer. I have seen 
an awful theft, and I feel every day more and more 
like a thief. The knowledge is unbearable. I am 
innocent, I am ! But the evidences are all against 

i ” 

me ! 

Robert held Dorothy off from him a second, his 
features sharpening. 

At this moment Joe and Elizabeth came bound- 
ing into the room, and Dorothy, giving her father 
an anxious sign, busied herself with them. 

Robert seized the first opportunity to ask Doro- 
thy to go to another room with him, but she shook 
her head and said, 

“ Mother must not know there is any thing.” 

The tea-table was now set. The little family ate 
their supper, Dorothy more than usually talkative; 
Robert thoughtful and quiet. 

After tea Mrs. Delafield insisted on Dorothy’s 
making a neighborly call. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


299 


They stayed all the evening in a close, highly 
heated room, and when they rose to leave Dorothy 
felt so numb and heavy, she wondered whether she 
could walk home. How slie reached their cheerful 
sitting-room she never quite remembered. Her 
father looked like some one in a dream as they 
came in. She went up to him slowly, her face 
shining with love, but excessively pale. She put 
her arms around him and laid her head on his 
shoulder. Then she lifted it, and looking into his 
eyes said, softly, 

“To-morrow! good-night. I am so sleepy; 
good-night, dear mother.” 

She took her little lamp and went up stairs, and 
Robert, unwilling to tell what Dorothy had com- 
mitted to him, said, 

“ Do you think daughter looks well ? ” 

Mrs. Delafield was surprised. 

“ Dorothy seems perfectly well. She is pale 
sometimes and doesn’t relish her food. But she is 
asleep whenever I go into her room at night. I 
guess it’s the spring weather. But I haven’t noticed 
any thing.” 

Dorothy kneeled and said her prayers with the 
same misty, far-away feeling. She did not care one 
way or the other about the theft. The verse, “ the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the de- 
struction that wasteth at noonday” echoed through 
her benumbed brain. No matter ! She could not 
help it! She reached over and took Elizabeth in 
her arms. She wanted to touch some one, for she 
had a curious feeling of drifting away as her head 
sank on her pillow. 


300 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Mrs. Delafield got up in the middle of the night 
and went into Dorothy’s room. 

Her daughter was very pale. There were heavy 
rings under her eyes, and the blue veins showed 
w’ith unusual distinctness on her fair temples. She 
breathed regularly, a little heavily, but then Doro- 
thy was a strong girl. 

The mother stood looking at her a long time 
with mingled fondness, pride, and anxiety, and 
went back to her room thoughtfully. She got up 
again in the gray morning light. Dorothy lay 
there wide awake. 

“Dreaming day-dreams, daughter?” said Mrs. 
Delafield, approaching the bed. She threw up her 
hands in consternation as she came to her child’s 
side ; for Dorothy lay there on her back, her cheeks, 
once so pink, pale as the whitest rose, her gray eyes, 
so quick to turn at an affectionate word, round and 
wide open, looking up with a vacant stare. She 
did not talk. She was alive, but she looked so 
hopelessly out of her senses. 

“ Robert ! Robert ! ” and Mrs. Delafield sprang 
into her room. She did not cry, but she gasped, 
“ Dorothy,” with such intensity that Robert knew 
all at once that Dorothy had broken. 

He hastened after his wife. He took Dorothy’s 
long white hand, which lay so heavy and limp on 
the coverlet. 

“Daughter!” he exclaimed, in a voice of pas- 
sionate tenderness. 

Dorothy turned her head, her wide bright, eyes 
looked sane for a second, and then vacant again, 
but she said, in a most tired way, 


Dorothy Delafield. 301 

“ To-morrow, to-morrow.” 

They could not rouse her from her stupor again, 
and Robert dressed hurriedly and went out for Dr. 
Withers’s aged confrere^ who still went from house 
to house in Quincy, round and hale, with his weight 
of years lightly carried and much enjoyed. His 
merry face, not much subdued, was exasperating to 
Mrs. Delafield’s excited nerves. “ O, if Dr. With- 
ers were only alive ! ” 

With a harrowing of her conscience that she could 
hardly endure, she believed that Dorothy would 
die, because she had made such an idol of this 
child. She fell on her knees one minute, praying 
for Dorothy; the next minute she was petting Joe 
and Elizabeth with the irresistible sweetness she 
manifested in her tender moments; then back to 
Dorothy’s side she would go, with a hungry, pas- 
sionate anxiety that soon altered her whole as- 
pect. 

Dr. Trimble was puzzled. 

“ It may be typhoid, and it may be brain fever; 
but she's very sick. She must have been sick for 
several days. Haven’t you seen it?” 

Mrs. Delafield’s heart smote her anew. She, the 
most devoted of mothers, not to have seen this ! 
“ O, why had not Dorothy complained ! ” 

This first sad day of many still sadder came to a 
close. At the end of the third day the doctor said 
that Dorothy could not live. Mrs. Delafield threw 
herself on the floor in agony and prayed for her 
child’s life without reservation. She could part with 
every thing and every one else rather than lose 
Dorothy. 


302 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“Robert, send to New York for help; Dorothy 
must be saved.” 

So they telegraphed to New York, and a great 
physician came out ; an eccentric dogmatic man, 
with a bald crown and a wisp of hair in front of 
either ear ; a handsome old man withal, whose pom- 
posity was accompanied with so much knowledge 
and skill that it brought a kind of faith to his pa- 
tients. 

Mrs. Delafield watched him with the intensity of 
despair. 

“ Save her, doctor ; you must save her ! ” 

But the doctor only exclaimed “ H’m ! ” question- 
ing Dr. Trimble on his diagnosis, and apparently 
ignoring the anxious mother. Then, turning to 
Mr. Delafield, he said, 

“ Do you place this girl in my charge ?” 

“Yes,” replied Robert, but, in his thoughtful care 
of every body, adding a word in commendation of 
Dr. Trimble. 

“H’m!” said the doctor again. “There are so 
many comfortable old fools in this world it’s a won- 
der that there are any young ones left. The girl 
was being doctored into eternity as fast as she 
could go.” 

“ She will live, then ; O, she will live ! ” gasped 
Mrs. Delafield. 

“ She will either live or die,” said the doctor, 
oracularly. “No babyfied, homeopathic nonsense is 
going to cure her. If she were an infant, this stuff 
might have helped her,” and the gruff but earnest 
old man poured Dr. Trimble’s medicine away as he 
spoke. 


DoRoriiY Delafield. 


303 


“ What mental shock has she received ? ” 

The doctor now turned his little black eyes on Mrs. 
Delafield. 

“ She hasn’t had a shock of any kind. She has 
lived a pleasant, beautiful life. She may have 
studied a little too hard.” 

The doctor shook his head impatiently. 

Robert had not told his wife of Dorothy’s dis- 
closure. He half believed it one of the illusions of 
her illness. If Dorothy should die, better to leave 
it forever untold than that any word of his should 
fasten a shadow of suspicion to a nature he knew 
to be as white as snow. With his calm mind he 
reasoned that Dorothy had overestimated the evi- 
dence against herself if the theft were not imaginary, 
and that the secret, if she did not reveal it, might 
better remain unmentioned. 

So, although the doctor inquired again about 
Dorothy’s life, he could learn nothing. 

“ If I can rouse her from her stupor, she will talk.” 
And he set his lips together and contracted his 
brows as he prepared her medicine. He adminis- 
tered it, and sat down beside his patient. 

The door into the square hall stood wide open. 
In a dark corner, leaning on the banister and look- 
ing in, lingered Elizabeth, slight, solemn, and 
speechless. Joe was kept out of the house. The 
little home knew no sound except the muffled fall 
of steps taken for Dorothy. 

Robert sat at the foot of the bed. Mrs. Delafield 
had gone into her own room to smother the hyster- 
ical grief that had seized her with even the shadow 
of a hope that Dorothy might live. The stillness 


304 


Dorothy Delafield. 


was broken by the thud of the heavy knocker on 
the front door. Elizabeth sped down the stairs, like 
a messenger of silence. She opened the door so 
quietly that only the draft of air floating up the 
staircase told that any one had been admitted. 
Judge Pettibone came in, but the child, who had 
always shown a guileless and open admiration for 
the tali and stately man, put her finger on her lip, 
and looked solemnly up the stairs. 

The judge felt, with a thrill of sympathy, that 
some one must lie dead up there. For some reason 
or another the possibility of such a thing for Doro- 
thy did not enter his mind. Her high vitality and 
rich coloring had made the very thought of her like 
a living presence. 

Understanding Elizabeth’s look as a signal to 
ascend, he passed up the narrow staircase rever- 
ently. The afternoon light lay in bands of clearer 
whiteness across the counterpane of Dorothy's bed. 
It rayed out into the little hall and felt warm and 
inviting as the judge lifted his foot to the last step. 
He looked up. The picture through that narrow 
open door he never forgot. He stood there un- 
noticed, but a horrible, sickening dread, and the 
consciousness of an intense affection rushed in upon 
him till he felt he should fall. Dorothy dead ! He 
saw, with the distinctness a drowning man might, 
her clear and almost severe profile. Her soft and 
mobile lips were set together rigidly, and brought 
out startingly the resemblance she bore to her moth- 
er, and which in health had been only occasionally 
suggested. Her long light-brown lashes lay so still 
upon the gracious curve of her white cheeks. The 


Dorothy Delafield. 


305 


wavy brown hair, all aglow with threads of gold, was 
thrown up behind her head upon the pillow. Her 
supple white hands, not yet attenuated, lay long 
and pale and lifeless upon the counterpane. There 
was something so majestic and so pure in her still 
beauty that Judge Pettibone felt a sacred awe in 
the midst of his tumultuous sorrow, as if he were 
beholding some one whom heaven had consecrated. 
He stepped into the room at length. 

Robert looked up and gravely nodded. The 
doctor glanced abruptly at the judge underneath 
the tufts of gray hair on either eyebrow, and then, 
with something of a frown, resumed his watch. He 
rose, as if another thought had struck him, and 
oj^ened the window. 

The air was mild ; a fresh earthly smell came in 
from out-of-doors. 

Dorothy’s mother now came to the open door 
which connected her own with her children’s room. 
She was pale and haggard. Her large serious eyes 
were sharp, with a harrowing anxiety that mani- 
fested itself in the constant working of her fingers. 

The sun sank sufficiently to suddenly bar Doro- 
thy’s bed with golden light. A brilliant ray fell 
strongly upon her face and lighted her hair to soft 
brightness. She tossed nervously. 

Judge Pettibone rose to lower the curtain. The 
doctor arrested him. 

Dorothy’s lips moved. Mrs. Delafield leaned 
into the room and over the low head-board ; her 
breath came shortly through her compressed 
mouth. 

A wavering moan came from Dorothy’s lips ; she 
20 


Dorothy Delafield. 


306 

lifted her hands, as if warding off something unseen, 
but they fell helplessly on the counterpane. 

“Ellice, poor Ellice; and poor, poor Dorothy!” 

She moaned again, a shuddering soft wail. 

“ So wicked. O, how bright they are ! ” and she 
rocked her head to and fro in the brilliant sunlight. 
“ Put them back, please, please, madame. How 
dark the hall is ! O, if Judge Pettibone knew ; O ! ” 
and Dorothy clasped her arms convulsively across 
her bosom. “Good-bye, Ellice; good-bye. Take 
care, Ellice ! O, poor Ellice ; poor, poor, poor Dor- 
othy ! ” 

She opened her eyes. Judge Pettibone, filled 
with a wild vague fear, his instincts, his suspicions 
of months taking sudden definite shape, had 
clenched the foot-board with both hands. His keen 
black eyes were fixed on Dorothy’s pale, sorrowful 
countenance, as if he must hear something more. 
His presence seemed to stir some memory vaguely 
in her. She gave him a troubled, pathetic glance, 
and sighed so heavily that the sigh died away in a 
convulsive sob. 

“ Do you make any thing out of this ? ” asked 
the doctor, turning first to one and then to another. 
“ Who is madame ? Who is Ellice ? ” 

Judge Pettibone explained instantly and briefly. 
Robert, with the pent-up repression of all these 
days of suffering, suddenly yielding, said, 

“ It is madame ! It must be madame ! ” 

“ O, madame 1 madame ! ” and Dorothy’s voice 
died away in a lingering appeal. 

The doctor silently bade Mrs. Delafield take his 
chair, and then withdrew with the two gentlemen. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


307 

“ Gentlemen,” said Robert, “ Dorothy has been 
witness of a theft of some kind.” 

And then he repeated his conversation with his 
daughter, and explained his own notion that Doro- 
thy’s first statement had probably been an illusion 
connected with her approaching illness. 

Judge Pettibone paced the room with excite- 
ment. What could madame have taken ? Suddenly 
the attic, with its treasures, which had been safe and 
unmolested for years, occurred to him. That was 
impossible ! It was too daring. Ellice visited the 
jewels too frequently. Then the thought of the 
intimacy recurred to him. He stopped his walk. 

With Judge Pettibone to suspect any thing of 
this kind was to take immediate action. He laid 
his hand on the doctor’s arm. In all his sudden, 
awful fear that Ellice was associated with a desper- 
ate, bad woman, he waited to ask, with tremulous 
gravity, 

“ Can you save this young girl’s life ? ” 

The old doctor looked at the judge keenly and 
kindly. 

“ I will do what I can. Does your world stand 
still, too, if this girl dies ? ” 

“Save her, doctor!” and Judge Pettibone, 
without further explanation, bade the two men 
good-night, and withdrew. 

He passed with a nervous, silent tread before the 
open door of Dorothy’s room. Her gentle moan 
rang in his ears that night, and many, many nights. 
He quickly untied his hqrse, sprang into his buggy, 
and rode recklessly down the Quincy hills, and 
through the deep muddy ruts of the valley, the 


Dorothy Delafield. 


308 

roads in many places, moistened by the spring 
rains and the loosening of the frost, springy and 
soft to an almost impassable degree. 

The judge reached home in the grayness of the 
early twilight. Far and wide the level lands were 
resonant with the melancholy, continuous refrain of 
the tree-toads. 

“Tell Virginia to have my supper ready in a 
half-hour, and fasten Pete and Joe to the buck- 
board. Be ready to drive me to the station in an 
hour.” 

The judge gave his orders briefly and command- 
ingly to Andrew, who had little to do these days 
but to sit waiting for orders. 

He strode up the stairs, on up the second flight. 
He opened the door of the attic, which creaked 
dismally on its hinges. The whole place suggested 
Ellice. He put his hand across his eyes for a 
second. Then he threw open the window — only 
light enough coming in at that late hour to indis- 
tinctly define things in the heart of the garret. He 
opened the oak closet. He took down the skele- 
tons, throwing their bones rattling on the floor. 
He drew out the drawers behind the secret lock, 
and strode with them to the window', holding thpm 
outside in the waning light even straining his fierce 
eyes eagerly over the jewels, familiar to him from 
boyhood. 

The necklace, around which a dozen somber, un- 
canny family legends clustered, was gone — the one 
that was said to bring misfortune to every neck it 
clasped. 

Judge Pettibone’s features set in rigid anger. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


309 


Three hours later he was approaching New York. 
A thick fog covered the Hudson as he went on the 
ferry-boat. The hollow, monotonous refrain of the 
fog-horns, far and near, exasperated him. They 
seemed like trumpeters of some awful calamity. 

The story of Eli floated through his brain. Were 
Nathan and Ellice to be monuments of his weak, 
indulgent love ? What had he taught them outside 
of the philosophy of pleasure ? What did the 
negative goodness he had fostered avail for the 
storms of life ? 

He drove madly to the Brevoort. 

It was eleven o’clock when he entered the hotel, 
pale and anxious to a degree that excited attention. 

He gave his card for Miss Pettibone. 

The man at the desk looked up with that alert- 
ness for something wrong which such functionaries 
possess, and said, 

“ Rooms given up this morning, sir!” 

A conviction that seemed to congeal every parti- 
cle of feeling seized the judge. 

“ What address did Madame Rameau leave for 
letters ? ” 

The clerk looked through the register and shook 
his head. 

“ Didn’t leave any.” 

“ When did the trunks go ? ” 

“ Here, you, John ! ” and the clerk beckoned to 
a porter, “ when did you take the trunks from 
room 104?” 

“Room 104? French ladies’ trunks ? This even- 
ing. Lady took a kerrige. Didn’t take one o’ 
ours. Her traps an’ herself filled the seats.” 


310 Dorothy Delafield. 

“ Didn’t a young lady go with her? ” now asked 
the clerk. 

“ Chambermaid for 104 says that the young lady 
aint been here since yesterday morning.” 

The clerk and the judge viewed each other with 
uncommunicative eyes. 

Judge Pettibone, with the secretive pride belong- 
ing to a man who had never had unwholesome 
family secrets, but who suddenly feels himself on 
the verge of some dreadful scandal, now began to 
inquire about rooms, but in a hard, dry voice. 

He soon satisfied himself with one on the parlor 
floor. He asked for a file of the day’s papers. His 
keen, judicial mind was working with the rapidity 
of lightning. He tried to recall madame’s conver- 
sations — any allusion she might have made to 
localities, or persons in New York. It flashed upon 
him that she had never in any way committed her- 
self to details. He had absolutely no clew to her 
possible whereabouts. His whole thought was con- 
centrated upon her; yet, underneath it all was a 
subtle, benumbing fear for Ellice. 

As he sat down alone over a fire that had been 
hastily made for him, in the midst of his anxiety a 
thought of the shivering weakness of aged decrepi- 
tude floated through his mind. Old age disap- 
pointed, childless, unhonored, projected itself before 
him. He hardly knew what he expected to find in 
the papers. He had a half-defined notion that they 
might start a clew. First of all, he wanted to prove 
madame a thief. Ah, he had it ! she must have 
taken those diamonds for money. They were 
somewhere in New York, then. The judge scanned 


Dorothy DiiLafield. 


311 

the advertisements. He cut out one advertisement 
and another of jewelers and brokers — while he was 
doing this his eyes fell upon the shipping lists. 
To-morrow was the day for the French steamers. 
What more natural place than Paris for madame, 
with her ill-gotten gain ? But Ellice ! What had 
all this to do with his daughter? 

The judge got up and walked the floor in his per- 
plexity. He could not establish a connection, but 
it was clear to him that madame would be an easier 
person to find than his daughter. And wherever 
Ellice was — that madame would know. 

All at once a line of action suggested itself to 
Judge Pettibone. He felt vexed that it had taken 
an hour of his precious time. He left his room. He 
walked firmly and sedately through the large cen- 
tral hall 'of the hotel. He went out at midnight, 
feeling the friendlessness of the great city, and 
shivering as he thought of the unsophistication of 
youth. He went to a famous detective, whom he 
had employed in commercial cases, and laid the 
state of affairs before him. The detective listened, 
and made a wager that he would have the threads 
in his hands before day-break. 

“The sooner, the larger the reward,” said the judge. 

“ I will send X. up to the hotels and T. to the rail- 
way stations and G. to the steamers. I’ll find this 
woman if she is in New York, or in what direction 
she has gone if she has left the city. I can soon 
find out about the carriage. It isn’t likely she had 
any one’s private conveyance. The trouble is with 
the diamonds — can’t get on track of them till morn- 
ing. They’re at a brokers, though.” 


312 


Dorothy Delafield. 


‘‘You had better consult all the hotel lists,” said 
the judge. 

“Of course,” and the detective viewed Judge 
Pettibone as if he could make no suggestion not 
previously thought of. 

“ Is there any thing that I can do ? ” inquired 
Judge Pettibone. 

“ You will only defeat your own ends. Go back 
to your hotel. Keep your room, and whatever we 
find out, and whenever we find it. I’ll let you know. 
Let me see — it’s one o’clock. You will have news 
of some kind by four.” 

Judge Pettibone buttoned up his coat and went 
out into the raw March wind, and drove up to the 
hotel. There was a solitary, sleepy porter at the 
entrance. 

The judge left orders for any messenger to be 
sent immediately to his room, and then went to 
his apartment. He had no thought of sleep. He 
threw himself down in a large chair before the fire 
and, closing his eyes, conjured up pictures of Ellice 
— his pride, his delight, his darling. Not a suspi- 
cion crossed his mind that Ellice’s honor was in 
any way involved, save in appearance. She was so 
true to him, as the needle to the pole. She was 
with madame, of course, or where madame had left 
her, and doubtless suffering as much, after her femi- 
nine and girlish fashion, as he in his. His poor, 
abused, affectionate girl ! The judge imagined her 
a little girl once more. He folded her to his heart 
and felt her head nestling in his neck. He was on 
horseback by her side — galloping over the long 
stretches of meadow and through the woods — and 


Dorothy Delafield. 313 

Ellice’s brown eyes were flashing back laughter and 
delight into his, and how happy they were together. 
Then the home where she was born, and where all 
the happy, if uneventful, years of her girlhood had 
been spent, came up. The emptiness of the rooms 
he had come from was gone. They were orderly 
and sunshiny and sweet with the presence of youth 
once more. He and Ellice would go back together. 
They would begin again. Ellice would love him 
more than ever, cling to him more than ever, after 
finding the friend of her fancy so false. Then a 
thought of Dorothy stole in. The judge half 
smiled as he planned for the two girls. They should 
be as intimate as sisters, with the closeness of the 
sweetest mutual friendship. Ellice would, of course, 
find Dorothy all sufficient. All the instinctive dark 
forebodings had faded and faded before this series 
of pictures. So that, although Judge Pettibone 
looked haggard and tired, he was quite unprepared 
to see the chief detective himself walk in with a 
most serious and portentous face. 

“ I’ve found them ! ” 

“ Found them ! ” 

Judge Pettibone dreaded to hear the results of 
the search. His imagination was powerless, dead, 
in the face of possible and very near disagreeable 
truths. He took hold of the back of his chair. 

“ But there are three of them ! There’s a man, 
too!” 

“What ! has this French woman a husband?” 

The detective shook his head. Even he, accus- 
tomed to such disclosures during a life-time, dis- 
liked to tell this proud judge just what he had found. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


314 

“ They answer to the description — the two 
women — only the blonde, middle-aged one is Mrs. 
Brament, the others are the Marquis and Mar- 
chioness De Vincy. They answer the ticket, though. 
The track is all uncovered from this very hotel — 
carriages, trunks, personal appearance. Steamer 
sails at eight ; baggage went on board this after- 
noon — passengers to-night. I have a cab here at 
the door. You had better go down and inspect the 
baggage before daylight. If you can identify the 
trunks, I can start on the diamonds next.” 

The day was dimly breaking when Judge Petti- 
bone went on boaid ship. He would rather never 
have found Ellice than find what was slowly reveal- 
ing itself now as a horrible certainty. 

The porter and the detective, lanterns in hand, 
finally swung them high above their heads, as they 
paused before a cluster of trunks. 

“ Know them ? ” and the detective, forgetting 
any thought of sympathy in his anxiety to prove 
the correctness of his researches, looked at the 
judge. 

Yes; there was the huge rounded top of the one 
that madame had brought to his house, with foreign 
names, mutilated and disfigured, dotting its expan- 
sive surface. And here was the sole-leather one he 
had selected for Ellice herself, years ago — a trunk 
in which she had taken such innocent pride. Her 
initials, E. P., seemed to stare at him with resolute 
defiance. 

The judge bent far over. He took a lantern and 
scanned the trunks with painful minuteness, and 
finally he rose upright, stern, white. 


Dorothy Delafield. 315 

“ They are the trunks. I will stay on board. Bring 
an officer back at seven. I’ll arrest this woman.” 

He strode away through the faintly relieved dark- 
ness. He left a message for the captain, and then 
went up to pace the deck. Back and forth ! back 
and forth ! How sullen and cold and prosaic the 
New Jersey shore looked in the gray light. Cakes 
of yellowish ice dashed drearily and monotonously 
against the sides of the vessel in its slip. The hol- 
low wind swept through the cordage with a long, 
despairing, constantly rising or dying, groan. Far 
out in the narrows the mist closed in the view ; that 
outward sweep of water was like the impenetrable 
vail of eternity. 

The judge was trying to reason himself into calm- 
ness. But the indulgence, the inertia, the vacilla- 
tion which had marked his discipline of Ellice in the 
twenty years of her life, gathered into an obstinate, 
unreasoning anger, which would admit of no palli- 
ative. Ellice had betrayed his trust, wounded his 
pride, disgraced his name. There was no forgive- 
ness in his heart ; but his determination to see her 
never flagged for an instant. 

The captain came to him shortly before seven. 
He corroborated the story of the detective. The 
younger woman was booked as the wife of the mar- 
quis. They and Madame Brament had communi- 
cating state-rooms. 

Judge Pettibone did not flinch from the pain 
which smote his heart as he thought of Ellice’s 
future unhappiness. She had sown to the wind, 
let her reap the whirlwind. Nevertheless, the 
minutes seemed like hours. 


3i6 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Promptly at seven the detective returned with 
an officer. Other passengers were coming on. 
There were constant coming and going. 

Meanwhile, madame and Ellice and the marquis 
had received a summons which Ellice understood 
least of all. 

Madame demurred and then refused to leave her 
state-room, until the captain told her that the sum- 
mons was from an officer. 

She gathered all her forces, but the effort left her 
cheeks bloodless, although her eye had the cold, 
glittering look of cut-steel. 

They went out along the deck to the captain’s 
office. 

The judge stood within the small apartment, fac- 
ing the door, grim as an avenging angel. 

Madame Rameau entered, proud and defiant. 
The marquis followed her. Ellice shrank behind for 
a moment. 

She would have been filled with a still more con- 
suming fear could she have known that she was to 
see her father. As her feet touched the threshold, 
she raised her downcast eyes and beheld the judge. 

His paleness and inflexibility smote her, but his 
anger was for madame and her husband — not for 
her ! When had he ever refused her the shelter of 
arms he seemed always longing to extend to 
her? She rushed to him with a glad cry. She 
fled so closely against his heart and laid her head 
so quickly in his neck, that for a second he could 
not resist her. Then he seized her with an iron 
grip and almost lifted her from her feet as he set 
her aside. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


317 


O, what a cold, hard, merciless eye ! It was like 
a knife to her conscience. Such a gaze — from her 
father ! 

The officer read the arrest. 

As Ellice heard the crime of which madame was 
accused, her horror gave words to her impulsive 
tongue, and she exclaimed, 

“Impossible! Madame a thief! Never! Ex- 
plain, dear madame, about your diamonds.” 

The judge gave Ellice one fleeting, relenting look. 
She was honest at least, if infatuated. 

The officer formulated his charges, and madame’s 
countenance changed sufficiently when Dorothy’s 
ravings were described for him to seize and press 
home the advantage thus gained. 

As the guilty woman yielded point after point 
Ellice looked with awful horror, first at her, and then 
at the marquis. 

“Was she a companion of thieves; she, Ellice 
Pettibone ! Judge Pettibone’s daughter!” 

“ O, father, take me home ! ” and Ellice rushed 
again to her father. 

He thrust her away. 

“ Are you the wife of that man ? ” 

Ellice shuddered as she assented. 

Madame, gaining sudden desperate courage, and 
feeling that all her subterfuges were impossible, 
said, in a high, hard tone, 

“ She is the wife of my son ; she is my daughter- 
in-law ! ” 

Ellice shrank against the wall. 

The judge felt as if an iron hand had struck him. 
He swayed an instant. 


3i8 Dorothy Delafield. 

The bell sounded a warning. But a few minutes 
were left. 

“ Father ! ” take me home with you ; ‘‘lam your 
daughter ! ” 

Judge Pettibone stepped across the room. He 
opened the door. 

“ Captain,’’ said he, turning, “ I withdraw my 
order for arrest.” 

“ Madame, la Marquise,” and he bowed to Ellice, 
“ my daughter, Ellice Pettibone, is dead.” 

The judge did not pause till he was off the 
steamer. 

The Marquis de Vincy placed Ellice's arm within 
his own and conducted her, stupefied with remorse 
and terror, back to her room. 

Madame made the necessary statements about 
the diamonds, and congratulated herself that the 
money for them was not demanded. Privacy in 
her state-room would ward off mortification on 
board ship. It was to the captain’s interest to keep 
her story secret. Once in Paris she would soon be 
lost in a new life. 



Dorothy Delafield. 


319 


©HAPIFEI^ XII. 

JUDGE PETTIBONE returned home with a 
\J feeling of mingled shame and anguish which 
made him long to withdraw from observation. 
With Ellice abroad and Nathan in the West, and 
war in the south, he did not know where to turn, 
for all Europe meant Ellice and the whole unex- 
plored as well as populated regions of the West 
meant Nathan. He was too sad to bury himself in 
the woes of his country, and too hopeless and too 
old to deceive himself with new ambitions. So he 
sat alone in his great sunny library, with Giant at 
his feet, idly pretending to read, but most of the 
time with his eyes on the floor while wearily going 
over his whole life. He thought of Lessing’s 
words, that strife and not consummation was the 
best destiny for man ; but at fifty years of age he 
felt that strife was poetry and .solid achievement of 
human happiness, if hard prose, nevertheless a 
much-to-be-desired reality. He passed in review 
all the lives with which his own had been inter- 
woven. Disappointment, in some form or another, 
had eclipsed them all. No matter how unclouded 
the sun of each one had arisen, it had disappeared 
in early fog, or midday storm, or sullen twilight 
gloom. The storm had come upon each house- 
holder as a thief in the night. With what extraor- 
dinary nicety the burden had been fitted to every 
back, and how the strain had bent the shoulders or 


320 


Dorothy Delafield. 


withered the heart or consumed the intellect. Like 
Job of old, Judge Pettibone felt that this life could 
not be all, or evil and not good was triumphant. 

Half-cynically, half-longingly, his thought one 
day reverted to Dorothy’s faith. It was true it was 
only the youthful efflorescence of her trustful nature, 
but even then it was a support to tide her over the 
harsh surprises that had already begun to assail 
her. He picked up a letter from the table that he 
had received from Mr. Delafield on his return. 

Dorothy was better, was conscious ; she would 
recover with the gentlest care,” the doctor thought. 
He could not have looked into Dorothy’s eyes for 
the world during these first days of his unhappiness. 
The sobriety of waiting, even when the heart knows 
the intensest eagerness, which is the frequent ex- 
perience of approaching age. Judge Pettibone un- 
derstood. He knew already that he yearned 
vaguely and yet expectantly for a possible future in 
which Dorothy’s sweetness and gentleness, her art- 
less honesty, and her calm, clear mind might be like 
the mellow light of a lamp to his soberness and his 
steadfast and kind, if quiet, affection. So, though 
he longed to mount his horse and ride over to 
Quincy, and begin immediately the effort to con- 
centrate his first thought and first attention on this 
sweet girl who should and could be to him what 
Ellice and Nathan ought to have been, he deemed 
it best to wait. He rose from his chair, and while 
wandering out of the house to the conservatories, a 
few yards distant, for the purpose of gathering 
some flowers to send to Dorothy, something in the 
blue sky and the warm and calm spring day smote 


Dorothy Delafield. 


321 


him with a thought of Ellice, and parental love ob- 
literated all those cravings for companionship which 
make the strongest man seem so helpless to him- 
self. He went on, however, to the accomplishment 
of his intention, and taking the scissors from the 
gardener’s hand he cut right and left, to the old 
man’s dismay ; for, though having all his flowers so 
long uncut, he had come to regard the loss of any 
almost a desecration. 

Judge Pettibone took a large basket and began 
to lay the flowers in promiscuously, but suddenly 
a thought seized him and he emptied them all out, 
and then began to clip the various varieties of pink 
roses in bloom. He filled the basket with a blush- 
ing profusion of the roses, relieved just enough by 
the dark setting of their green leaves that cropped 
up here and there. 

Gershom looked at him askance, his under lip 
drawn between his teeth, a quizzical intelligent in- 
quiry in his eyes. 

As the judge finished covering the flowers and 
gave directions for having them sent right away to 
Quincy, Greshom read the card attached, “ To Mrs. 
Delafield for Miss Dorothy,” and shook his grizzled 
head regretfully. 

“ Never did think youd\y^ an old fool,” he mut- 
tered, as the judge disappeared down the gravel 
walk. It’s all on account er those idle chillern o’ 
yourn. This old house ’ll see changes. Shell 
never be the head to ’t that Miss Ellice would ’a’ 
been, though she’ll be a church goin’, proper, dainty- 
fied kind of er pusson, but nothin’ shinin’ an’ gra- 
cious an’ free an’ plentiful-like as Miss Ellice would 
21 


Dorothy Delafield. 


322 

’a’ been. She an’ the jedge ’ll yet settle down, an* 
the ole house ’ll be a roomy nussery the rest o’ my 
days, an’ that is all.” 

Gershom shook his head mournfully as he gath- 
ered up the flowers the judge had wasted, and 
began to examine, with a lover’s eye, the buds that 
promised an early blooming. 

Thus the day passed, and many others like it. 
Judge Pettibone held himself resolutely to his 
books or his thoughts, writing daily a brief let- 
ter to Nathan, and receiving equally brief ones in 
return, watching the shipping news with harrowing 
anxiety when the time came for Ellice to land, and 
feeling glad and sorry both that she had crossed in 
safety. He hated himself for his incapacity to ban- 
ish his solicitude and affection for his daughter, and 
nursed a silent contempt he entertained for Nathan. 
The last mild days of April had come, bringing a 
purple haze to the atmosphere, a redolence to the 
pines and cedars, and a touch of green on the 
strand and the willows, before the judge allowed 
himself to drive over and see Dorothy. 

She was sitting by the west window of the little 
parlor as he approached the house, and her face 
lighted with a glad smile as she recognized him. 
He wondered that he could feel so glad, even happy, 
over this natural and proper recognition from his 
young friend. 

The almost daily inquiries and flowers that she 
had received had not been half so sweet to Doro- 
thy as the interest they indicated. She was de- 
lighted that Ellice’s father had bestowed so much 
thought upon her, and her daily inward exclama- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


3^3 


tion was, “ How much he must love Ellice to be so 
kind to me! ” She tried to conceive what attentions 
like these, such as Ellice has had all her life long, 
would be to her, if they were never withdrawn. In 
her relaxed condition, her head propped up by 
pillows in the large chair in which she was seated 
the greater part of the day now, her shapely white 
hands gently clasped in her lap, the paleness of her 
thin, pathetic face made paler by her simple gray 
woolen wrapper, she unconsciously allowed herself 
in luxurious day-dreams what she would have res- 
olutely banished if she could have studied or busied 
herself with household cares. 

The young life in her veins brought her, each 
day of her convalescence, into sweeter sympathy 
with the things of this world. How beautiful the 
spring was. How tender her mother was. How 
loving and sympathetic her silent, refined father 
was. Joe and Elizabeth were such dear children. 
God was good. He was so good to her, Dorothy 
felt sure that he gave her many a secret blessing in 
her very heart. Such thoughts as these had alter- 
nated with lapses of gentle sleep throughout the 
still and long spring afternoon. She had awakened 
from one of her little naps much refreshed, and her 
large gray eyes had a brighter, more rested look 
than they had yet worn, as she looked up lovingly 
and trustfully into Judge Pettibone’s face while 
he held her hand and questioned her about her 
strength. 

Presently he sat down nearly opposite her, think- 
ing hers the purest, sweetest face he had ever seen, 
and yet quietly rejoicing in the firm, if delicate, con- 


324 


Dorothy Delafield. 


tour of the cheeks and chin. There was so much 
in her face to link her delightfully with all the warm 
humanities of this mortal life, and much to make a 
man think oftener of his God. Judge Pettibone 
felt happier than he had believed it was possible for 
him to be, with Ellice and Nathan both gone, and 
his home and his heart so lately made desolate. He 
did not recognize this immediate effort on his own 
part to escape the unpleasant consequences of his 
parental training, as only another phase of that ele- 
ment so dominant in Nathan and Ellice, the active 
desire to be instantly rid of any thing unpleasant, 
whether a sensation, a circumstance, or a person. 
Any quiet, patient, voluntary endurance of evil be- 
cause it was necessary, had never entered his 
thought, yet he had an instant admiring apprecia- 
tion of endurance accompanied by pleasure as a 
motive power when it was manifested in others. 
He had a great liking for the whole Delafield fam- 
ily. His own ambition made him understand Mrs. 
Delafield’s, and its curious indirect way of working 
as the natural expression of her limitations from 
force of circumstances. He had flashes of compre- 
hension of the true spring of Robert Delafield’s 
character, and would have been glad to have been 
born ahead of his times, even if such an endowment 
left him, as it had left Robert, unable to be amused 
or deceived with the paltry returns ambition craved, 
or the outward trappings of fortune. 

As for Dorothy, she was like an English violet — 
all the sweeter for the crushing processes of her 
mental anxiety and resulting illness. He found 
himself momentarily more eager to transplant her. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


325 


As for her father, he did not agree with Dr. 
Withers. If Dorothy would marry him, he would 
place every opportunity in her father’s way of being 
the friend and helper of the poor, and he should 
have surroundings that would be fit accessories to 
his personal refinement. He enjoyed the thought 
of working in partnership with Mrs. Delafield for 
Dorothy’s general aggrandizement. He did not 
doubt that he would find a powerful ally in her. 

He rose to go when the summons to supper came, 
but he managed to linger till the others had been 
persuaded to withdraw, and stood beside Dorothy’s 
chair talking with a restrained elation and vigor 
that excited the delicate nerves of the feeble girl 
and dimly aroused her intuitions. Judge Pettibone 
had never seemed like this before. So, that while 
the color flushed her face in great waves and then 
receded, she looked at him wonderingly and inquir- 
ingly and with a kind of withdrawal into herself 
that only made her the more charming to the judge. 
The highest breeding and the warmest heart com- 
bined could not have given her a better manner. 
“ What a queen she will be as she grows older,’' 
thought the judge, and still he. stood there. 

Dorothy turned her face to the window. She 
felt for Ellice’s sapphire resting on her finger, and 
hoped she would come back. She looked at Judge 
Pettibone again with this thought, with mingled en- 
treaty and dignity. 

“ Forgive dear Ellice, Judge Pettibone; forgive 
her, and ask her to come home.” 

Judge Pettibone threw back his shoulders, his 
lips straightened, his eyes grew cold. 


326 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ Never ! ” he said. 

And then, regretting that Dorothy, of all others, 
should have been the first to feel the unrelenting 
nature of his attitude toward his child, he took her 
hand with mingled deprecation and reverence, and 
kissing it, bade her good-bye most gently and went 
out. 

Dorothy’s convalescence was much longer than 
they had expected it would be. She gained color, 
but little strength. 

Judge Pettibone suggested, one mild day in early 
May, that it would give him great pleasure to take 
her to drive daily, and that, perhaps, this exercise 
would quicken her recovery. 

Mrs. Delafield gladly assented, for she was grow- 
ing very anxious over her daughter’s slow return to 
health. 

Dorothy felt like an interloper the first time she 
took her seat in the low phaeton, from which she 
had so often seen Ellice’s face peer. No one under- 
stood how the affection of her gentle nature had en- 
twined itself about Ellice, and how she had looked 
and longed in vain for a letter as the days had glided 
away. Surely Ellice needed her sympathy, and what 
a wealth of it was in store if only she knew where to 
write. She had never dared speak of Ellice again 
to the judge, but she often looked at him with an 
eloquent entreaty in her eyes which he perfectly 
understood, and, while remaining unflinching, cher- 
ished the thought till it grew into a passion, that 
some day the whole tribute of her steadfast affec- 
tionateness would be diverted to himself. He felt 
chagrined over the necessity he had been under to 


Dorothy Delafield. 327 

tell the Delafields of Dr. Withers’s provision for 
Dorothy’s education. He would have liked to see 
the way blocked for her further intellectual develop- 
ment, except as he should be the one to aid her. He 
accordingly avoided any allusion to the future, and 
called into requisition all his powers to awaken the 
young girl’s admiration and love. 

There was no lack of the former, but he watched 
in vain to see a flutter of her white eyelids, or a 
sparkle of electric consciousness in her gray eyes. 
Her color came and went, as it always had done ; 
there was the same direct earnestness of thought 
and word, the same artless gratitude for every praise 
or care he gave her, and nothing more. 

He was perplexed because Dorothy could receive 
so much so freely, unless she had something to re- 
turn. The judge finally suspected that his care of 
her, as a father, had glided so gently into the atten- 
tions of a lover, that Dorothy was so unembarrassed 
and so simple, because his art had been too perfect. 
So he decided to be more explicit in his attentions. 

They drove one afternoon through the woods on 
the opposite side of the river. Every thing sug- 
gested the drive of the early winter, and Dorothy, 
absorbed in recalling all that Ellice had been to her 
in the short and happy months of their intimacy, let 
her hands fall apart. Her face wore a pained, sad 
look. The tears gathered till they were ready to 
fall. She had been released from the horrible sus- 
picion that she had feared might always connect 
itself with her name. How tenderly her father and 
mother and Judge Pettibone had told her of their 
trust in her and the proofs of madame’s guilt. 


328 


Dorothy Delafield. 


What could have led madame so astray ? But 
poor, dear Ellice! Dorothy’s heart burned with in- 
dignation as she thought of all that her intimacy 
with their wicked teacher had involved. 

Judge Pettibone, seeing this seriousness gather, 
and waiting till the silence had already been greatly 
prolonged, took one of Dorothy’s hands. Forgetful 
for the time being that he could be any one more 
than Ellice’s father, and her own tried friend, kind 
as her father would have been under similar favor- 
ing circumstances, she allowed her hand to rest 
in the judge’s and pursued her revery. 

Judge Pettibone’s hope grew with every second. 
Presently he gave Dorothy’s hand a gentle pressure. 
She returned it slightly — only thinking that she was 
receiving what the judge would have so much pre- 
ferred to have given Ellice. She would, she must 
entreat him once more, to urge Ellice to come 
home. 

Full of this thought, her eyes suffused with tears, 
she looked up, and was suddenly startled with a 
burning consciousness of what she was involved in, 
as she met the ardent gaze of Judge Pettibone’s 
fine eyes, and in another moment felt his kiss upon 
her upturned cheek, and then upon her mouth. 

“ Dorothy, my dear, gentle Dorothy, do you love 
me? will you love me?” 

Dorothy for answer clasped her hands in mute 
surprise and reproach, gave Judge Pettibone one 
dismayed, frightened, retreating look, and then rose, 
as if she would spring from the phaeton. 

The judge’s strong hand seized her; he pressed 
her forcibly but gently into her seat, and looking at 


Dorothy Delafield. 329 

her a second, with an odd mixture of mortification 
and pain, he said : 

“ I will not hurt you, Dorothy.” 

They drove on under the thick shade of the trees, 
Dorothy awkward, conscious, and afraid ; the judge 
feeling that he must make this young girl say some- 
thing. 

He stopped the horse presently in a little hollow 
where the isolation and quiet were almost oppress- 
ive, and letting the reins fall over the dash-board, 
turned in his seat, and looked again at Dorothy and 
felt as if he could not give her up. 

“ Dorothy,” he said, and his voice was very gen- 
tle, “ if you will marry me, you need not promise 
to love me, if you will only let me love you and 
take care of you. I can wait for what you 
may be able to give me.” He took her hand again. 

She looked up now, fearlessly and coldly, but 
with a gentle deprecation in her voice as she re- 
plied, 

“You could never be any thing else to me. Judge 
Pettibone, than dear Ellice’s father. I love you 
dearly, I love you very much, but not in that way, 
not in that way ! ” 

Judge Pettibone felt at once the folly and the 
incongruousness of resenting Dorothy’s rejection. 
He did feel hopelessly old and alone. So, gather- 
ing up the reins, he said, with some restraint and 
much kindness, 

“ We will forget all about this, Dorothy. I will 
be your friend, and in your own way.” 

He drove her home. 

She did not see him again before the autumn. 


330 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Then he came to bid her good-bye. No word had 
come to her from Ellice. Even Nathan was not 
mentioned. Dorothy parted with him in those 
first days of early September, and something of en- 
treaty in his eyes at the last minute led her to put 
up her face and kiss him, just as she had her father 
and her mother in his presence. No one could have 
been deceived in that girlish impulse, and Judge 
Pettibone had a defeated sense of how untram- 
meled this young girl went , forth to that Western 
college to bury herself in work and a life for which 
he had conceived an absolute aversion. 



PART THIRD. 


(SHAPrpBI^ I. 



IX years have elapsed since Dorothy bade good- 


o bye to the little circle in Quincy, and those 
six years have brought many changes. In the old- 
fashioned grave-yard, where Dr. Withers has slept 
summer and winter, undisturbed by professional or 
philanthropic cares, Joe and Elizabeth have also 
found a home. Dorothy’s lily never fully blossomed 
before its stem was broken, and Joe never attained 
a maturity whose severity interrupted his fondness 
for jack-stones and skates. Joe and Elizabeth do 
not slumber alone in the tall grasses that grow 
ranker and ranker as more and more new mounds 
are made in Quincy’s newer cemetery, laid out and 
improved by the company. For Mrs. Delafield has 
set her ambitions and disappointments aside, too, 
and the white roses that Dorothy planted on her 
grave have blossomed and faded for three successive 
seasons, and not one of Dorothy’s achievements at 
college have stirred the stillness of her once hungry 
heart, or made her black eyes flash with gratified 
pride and love. 

Dorothy and her father are all who are left of their 
little circle, and they are sitting together in the 
west window of the parlor as the early shadows of 
a cloudy October evening are gathering. No glow 
from the furnaces lights up the gloom of the misty 


332 


Dorothy Delafield. 


sky hanging above them ; no buzz of innumerable 
wheels fills the atmosphere with sounds of life and 
business stir. The mills have “ stopped.” 

The Quincy mill-owners awakened to the fact 
late in the summer that no money could be made 
from iron “ at present,” and so, without warning, 
the hands were paid off one day, the mills closed, 
never to reopen, and hundreds of families lingered 
on through September into October, and the wolf, 
that had never before showed its face in Quincy, 
began to peer into its humble homes as the first 
heavy frosts fell, and hundreds wondered where to- 
morrow’s bread would come from. 

“ It’s awful, Dorothy,” said Robert, as the wind 
boomed against the house and sped away with a 
prolonged sigh to the hills across the river. “ It’s 
a great comfort to me that I have my own store 
now, and am no longer obliged to sell at company’s 
prices. I’ve just gotten on my feet, but I’ll be 
swept off with the rest. Your mother was right, 
Dorothy, and I see it ; now it is too late. One 
might almost as well live in Russia as in a little 
village in America where all the valuable land and 
water-power are owned by a monopoly. I see it, 
Dorothy, plainly as can be, if what they say about 
the mills is true, that Quincy will be a town of 
paupers in a year. I pity Mr. Maxim from the 
bottom of my heart.” 

“ Pity him, father ! ” and Dorothy’s eyes flashed. 
“ I do not pity him, or the rich owners of all this 
land and these acres of mills ; they have sowed 
to the wind ; but it is the poor of this wretched little 
place who are reaping the whirlwind. Pity Quincy’s 


Dorothy Delafield. 


333 


poor, father,” and Dorothy got up and walked the 
floor. “ O, when I think of the half-century of 
labor represented by the hundreds of men and 
women who have lived here and worked here for 
the enrichment of two or three families, and realize 
that, without a word of warning or wages sufficient 
to more than feed and house a family, they and 
their children are left without an avenue of support, 
while the owners can retain their houses and lands 
and carriages. I say, pity the poor. Close your 
business, father, before you lose every thing. Let 
us shut up the house and go away. I will teach ; 
perhaps I might lecture. So many women are lect- 
uring nowadays, why couldn’t I ? I will do any 
thing, father, if you will come away with me.” 

But Robert slowly shook his head. 

“ It would be like deserting a sinking ship, Doro- 
thy. Somebody will have to look after all these 
people, and the owners either can’t or wont do 
much. They have offered to give $5,000 toward a 
fund, but $5,000 would be but a drop in the bucket. 
No, Dorothy, if you wont find fault, the people 
with whom I have lived shall share what I have, 
and then, if we can no longer hold out, you and I 
will leave Quincy.” 

Dorothy paused in her walk and gazed at her 
father with mingled love and wonder. The sense 
of responsibility for those nearest to her was so 
great with her that she could not understand his 
absorption in a whole town, and he her only protec- 
tion. But her reverence for the purity and noble- 
ness of his purpose, his uncomplaining cheerful si- 
lence about all that concerned himself, his unflag- 


334 


Dorothy Delafield. 


ging alacrity to be the general friend and adviser of 
the unfortunate, and, above all, his perfect and 
almost child-like confidence that she would under- 
stand him, that her hand would return the strong 
and nervous pressure of his over any thing beautiful 
in earth or humanity, led her to say, most lovingly^ 

“ Do what you think best, father.” 

Nevertheless, she was perfectly conscious that 
what her father thought best would eventually 
leave them penniless. “ But what matter,” thought 
Dorothy. “ Better father’s heart and father’s life 
with poverty than thousands without the consola- 
tion of his companionship and example.” 

So, while the darkness gathered closer and closer 
around them, they sat and planned how they would 
live on plainer food, and Dorothy would take care 
of the home, and thus in these ways they would 
lend to the Lord. 

The winter set in early, as winters have a fatal 
skill in doing when times are hard. Quincy men 
would walk down the steep hills as the first snows 
accumulated, shaking their heads revengefully as 
they looked at the motley mill roofs and saw the 
snow lying there unmelted from any warmth within. 
Mr. Maxim learned to dread to ride through the 
little town, the glances cast at him were so lower- 
ing. By and by a sullen, plotting anger gathered 
force against him and the owners, as letter after 
letter, full of present and anticipated distress, was 
sent and never received an answer. The conviction 
gathered force that the owners had not received any 
thing unless it came through Mr. Maxim, and that 
Mr. Maxim withheld all complaints that emphasized 


Dorothy Delafield. 335 

the poverty and sufYering which became daily more 
pronounced and pitiful. 

Dorothy would hasten to finish the work in their 
quiet home, and would repair to her father’s store, 
where she succeeded occasionally in placing a little 
barrier between his lavishness and the possible 
greater future need. There was a beautiful under- 
standing between father and daughter. Each knew 
that love or charity was the motive that prompted 
or restrained. Dorothy’s heart would sometimes 
beat like a trip-hammer when she would see a 
gaunt, muscular Irish woman making her way 
through the crowd that always clustered shiftlessly 
about the store to where her father stood. 

“ An’ shure, Mr. Delafield, yer the only man in 
this God-forsakin’ place that seems to have the 
heart of a Christian in yer. I’ve left me family 
shiverin’ and starvin’ at home. Billy an’ Tommy’s 
in bed, ’cause their shoes is worn-out, an’ no money 
to buy new ones, an’ nothin’ but Injun meal in the 
house to eat for these three days. When the booby 
began to cry, I jus’ says, says I, I will go down to 
Mr. Delafield an’ ax for bread an’ a bit of pork 
like. It’s the first time I’ve begged, but shure, 
isn’t all Quincy a-beggin’? kin yer accommodate a 
poor woman, Mr. Delafield?” 

Robert and Dorothy had agreed that every thing 
should take the form of a loan. So in a case like 
this, while the bread and pork were placed in the 
baskets, they were duly entered on the books. 
Dorothy dreaded to see the veins stand out in fine 
knots on her father’s high temples, as they often did 
by night. Many a night she spent in silent weep- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


336 

ing as she realized how thickly the gray hairs were 
multiplying in his dark-brown locks. A suspicious 
little halt came in his step as he would begin to 
descend a staircase, and she felt she would rather 
die than see him break down in this way, while still 
in his prime. When she would expostulate with 
him, and again beg him to leave Quincy, he would 
shake his head, and say, 

“No! ‘that no man was more blessed in the 
love of the poor, and that his work and his life must 
be spent where he was.’ ” 

He came home late one evening and walked up 
and down excitedly, his blue eyes flashing, his 
whole face indignant and sorrowful. 

“ O, daughter! the hunger and suffering of hun- 
dreds are resting on somebody’s head. It seems to 
me the owners of these mills are crazy; the works 
could be run on half-time without more loss in 
money than the degeneracy of the place will mean 
to them. I doled out provisions to-night to a man 
who walked three miles to spend ten cents for six 
mouths. He’s too proud to beg or accept gifts yet, 
but he will have to come to it. I put a double 
quantity of molasses and Indian meal in; but, Doro- 
thy ” — and her father looked at her excitedly — “ I 
can hardly get enough together to pay my bills in 
New York. They spend their money at the other 
stores and do their begging of me. I did think 
that those whom I helped would pay what they 
could.” 

“ Let us go away, dear father,” and Dorothy put 
her arms around his neck. 

“ No, no ; I can’t be a deserter. It would look 


Dorothy Delafield. 337 

like that. If we can stand it out, it will all come 
back. The people mean well, Dorothy.” 

“They are getting too demoralized, father; you 
have done what you could.” 

But Robert shook his head. Then he went on, 
excitedly, 

“ There’s the minister’s salary ! That will have 
to be cut down. It makes my heart bleed when I 
see men put five cents in the box who I know can 
afford but two meals a day.” 

As the winter advanced, those who had any 
m-oney to spare, or any thing from their years of 
small accumulation that they could spare, organized 
themselves into a relief committee ; and thus 
spring, while it found Quincy much poorer, found 
it adapting itself to its situation. During the long 
and bitter months the husbands and brothers had 
gone abroad in quest of work, and so in midsummer 
the Quincy post-office received so motley a mail, 
that one would have to draw the conclusion that 
its men had become either exiles or travelers. 
Rumors kept the little place expectant until another 
autumn settled down upon its grass-grown streets 
and resting machinery, and then Robert, staring 
hard facts in the face, promised Dorothy that if the 
mills did not open by another summer, he, too, 
would go forth with her to other scenes and other 
efforts. 

The ordeal through which she was passing had 
left its traces on Dorothy, also. Her beauty was of 
an enduring kind, and although she was now twenty- 
two years of age, her rich coloring and noble figure 
made her noticeable and commanding. But her 
22 


338 


Dorothy Delafield. 


expression and her step had a sedateness, a 
gravity, that, while giving a certain dignity to her 
sweetness, set her apart from all light conversation, 
or much girlishness of thought. Her mother’s 
teachings and ambitions had strongly colored her 
views, and while believing that her first thought 
belonged to her father during the trial through 
which he was passing, she felt it a sacred duty to 
apply her trained mind and quick mental activity to 
some practical personal end. When not beside her 
father or busied in their home, she found her com- 
panionship in books. She had been a girl with 
many friends, but few intimacies, at college. Her 
thought had been fixed on the end toward which 
she had been working, and her great success had 
been saddened and chastened by the death of a 
mother who had been her greatest inspiration. So 
here Dorothy stood, well across the threshold 
of womanhood, and with a life whose present 
conditions chanced to shut her away from all those 
rightful social allurements which strew the pathway 
of the young. There were young men in Quincy, 
but they would as soon have thought of any per- 
sonal regard for a duchess as for this silent, majestic 
girl, who trod their streets and worshiped beside 
them in their church, but whose eyes saw no mas- 
culine attractiveness outside of her father’s constant 
presence and protection. 

As for Robert, in these days, Dorothy’s future 
was of no moment to him in comparison with the 
present, when he had her always at his side, and 
when his mind was filled with graver problems con- 
cerning the poor and their conditions, than ever Dr. 


Dorothy Delafield. 339 

Withers would have had him realize so painfully 
and so practically. 

When November again rolled around they both 
lacked much of the sentiment that enfolds any 
new undertaking. Sickness and privation and dis- 
appointment had sharpened the angularities of 
many a nature that had always been rough, but had 
been hopeful and kindly. The once thrifty home 
of the Prouts bore many outward and inward signs 
of neglect. The street in front of their house, once 
traversed daily by many mill-carts, was full of strag- 
gling grass that had a nipped and ragged look as 
it waved back and forth in the mountain winds. 
The gate was off its hinges, for “ Enery ” was in 
Western Pennsylvania, and had “ taken to drink,” 
after disgracing himself in the army. “ Hemly ” 
and “ Mary Ann ” sat all day long by their west 
window sewing on “ Southern work, ’ and Mary 
Ann’s pale eyes had a bright red rim constantly 
around them from long application. Dorothy and 
Robert learned to abhor the sight of the coarse blue 
coats on which Quincy women sewed and sewed 
their eye-sight away to eke out a pittance in these 
distressing times. Every Friday the coats were 
brought from all over the town to Robert’s store, 
where the inspector examined them, as the rental 
of a separate place would have lowered the pittance 
these women received. Dorothy sometimes hid in 
the shadow of a projection watching the haggard 
women and girls as they stood in many a languid, 
disheartened attitude, listlessly regarding the in- 
spector, while others were nervously bent forward, 
their needle-scarred finger pointing eagerly to a 


340 


Dorothy Delafield. 


piece of work well done, or their voices garrulous 
and whining as they explained how the “ karosene 
had been sech a poor quality,” or they had had “ rheu- 
matiz an’ weak eyes.” She wondered if she could 
ever become hardened enough, were she an in- 
spector of “ Southern work,” to make those weary 
women pick up their ungainly bundles and go home 
to rectify seams before they could receive their six- 
pence a coat. She knew that she would expect 
the work to be done well ; but O, where were the 
chivalry and the progress and the prosperity of the 
poor of her free native land, when a whole town 
could go to ruin in the very doors of a great city, 
and the women and the children had to carry the 
burdens which were heavy enough from strong men ? 
Dorothy kneeled to say her prayers at night, after 
such spectacles throughout long afternoons, and no 
words would come. “O God! O God!” she 
would say, and kneel there, feeling too sad and too 
old to even smile again. 

This second winter took the color from her cheeks, 
and deepened the dark rings under her eyes, which 
came from much sleeplessness and weeping. The 
veins on her temples showed blue and delicate, 
while on Robert’s they became permanently knotted. 
Dorothy never thought of telling her father that 
her heart was breaking, for he had fallen into a 
silent, habit when alone with her, and her anxiety 
was growing very great lest he should faint 
under his self-imposed burdens before spring. Doro- 
thy had his promise for the spring, and her literal 
nature intended to claim its fulfillment absolutely. 

The snow lay in great drifts on the hillsides the 


Dorothy Delafield. 341 

whole winter long. At night-fall, often, along the 
various streets, boys and girls, in their first teens, 
straggled home from the woods, their backs bending 
under the great bundles of twigs and roots and fallen 
branches they had gathered from the company’s 
woods, to eke out scanty fires as the slender supply 
of coal fell short. In the midst of the extremity, 
old Dr. Trimble died, and no new 'physician dared 
come to Quincy in her destitution. All the little 
churches bravely maintained a struggling existence, 
and, as the cold intensified, they held union meetings, 
from which rolled up one common burden of suppli- 
cation to the Lord to lift the hand of blight and 
famine and poverty from Quincy. Fugitive articles 
now began to appear in the newspapers all over the 
country about the little mountain town that for 
fifty years had thrived, and then had fallen on evil 
times. Passengers would look from car windows, as 
trains paused, in their rush westward, while the great 
engines were watered — for Quincy hills had always 
laughed and sparkled with brooks and creeks, and 
had given freely of this her one blessing that never 
failed. 

“ There’s Quincy ! It’s dead — suffered more than 
any iron town in the country. Seven hundred poor 
fed last winter by other poor almost as destitute. 
It’s a bleak place.” 

“ Yes ; all run down. See those mill roofs down 
in the hollow — a million and a half dollars standing 
idle.” 

Men would press their faces against the windows, 
look up and over the wind-swept hilly town and 
down on the acres of silent mills, and then, drawing 


.342 


Dorothy Delafield. 


their coats up about their necks from the mental 
chill the spectacle suggested, would feel a throb of 
delight as the train sped on, and they were well out 
of Quincy. 

There came a time toward the close of the winter 
when Dorothy spent hours in walking up and down 
the little house. She could not sleep ; she ate lit- 
tle, and a nervous habit of reviewing possibilities 
kept her mind so active in one direction, that she 
finally put away her books, with a conviction that 
she would no longer use them in Quincy. A burn- 
ing, impelling desire began to possess her day and 
night to get away. She had occupied the square 
chamber, furnished in blue and gray, that had been 
a sanctuary to her in her childhood, and since her 
return from college it was dear to her with the asso- 
ciations of all her young life. She always slept with 
the door open into her father’s room. One still, 
dark, cold night, when the sky was muffled with 
clouds, and the air too icy for snow or rain, she had 
lain a long time, unable to sleep, and impressed 
with an overwhelming sense of impending evil. 
Her mental training led her to ascribe it to her 
tired nerves, and yet the impression increased. She 
rose and partially dressed herself, and then went to 
the window in the darkness, and tried to look out. 
She could only faintly discern the outline of the 
nearest trees ; not a sound, not a whisper of the 
wind that was so rarely silent. She went softly 
into her father’s room, kneeling beside his bed, and 
putting her hand gently on his brow ; it was moist 
and warm. He was a heavy sleeper, and his even 
breath reassured her. She laid her head beside his. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


343 


and took great comfort in being near him. She 
even began to grow drowsy, and dreams came, but 
they were disturbed. Suddenly she awakened and 
sprang to her feet, full of intense expectation. In 
a minute the knocker on the front door resounded. 

“I’m here, father, Dorothy! Lie still, and I 
will go down ; something is the matter 1 ” 

She lighted a candle and would have sped down 
the staircase alone, but Robert laid his hand on 
her shoulder and, taking the candle from her hand, 
preceded her, Dorothy following like a shadow. 

“ Who’s there ? ” and Robert put his ear against 
the door. 

“ It’s me — Mrs. Wilkins — the store’s on fire — 
come quick ! ” 

They heard her speed off the stoop, and then, for 
one second, father and daughter looked at each 
other, a solemn feeling taking instant possession of 
them both that they had reached a culmination. 

They were dressed in a very few minutes and 
went forth into that dark night, Dorothy swaying 
the lantern before her father’s feet as they came 
upon a slippery place ; Robert grasping the great 
key of his store. His step was firm, his hold of 
Dorothy’s hand like a vise. They had not far to 
walk, and every minute they looked for a jet of 
flame to illuminate the sky. 

No light flashed athwart the heavy sky ; but sud- 
denly the mellow bell of the Presbyterian church 
broke the stillness, and its rapid strokes aroused the 
little town. 

When Robert and Dorothy at last reached the 
store, although five minutes had not elapsed in their 


344 


Dorothy Delafield. 


hurried walk, they were perplexed and delighted 
both at the utter absence of any visible sign of fire. 
But at that moment a murky light illuminated dully 
the windows of the second-story and sullenly died 
away. 

Mrs. Wilkins’s shrill voice called out, 

That’s my room — it’s come up through the floor 
— I was nearly suffocated. I tell you every thing’s 
all ready to break into a blaze in the store ! ” 

The minutes were like hours. Two or three of 
the neighbors, aroused by the stir, had gathered, and 
Robert gazed at the great barn-like building, whose 
only other occupant in these times of destitution 
was Mrs. Wilkins, who acted as a general watch- 
man. He had instantly realized that if there were 
a fire that could have smoldered so long, the mat- 
ter of first importance was to keep the air from it, 
and his resolution was instantly taken to save the 
houses of the wretched poor around him from any 
risk, rather than to attempt to rescue his little 
stock. 

He called for an ax, and with a few strokes cut 
into the great window near the safe, where his ac- 
count-books were. 

A lad volunteered to climb in and bring them 
out. A wet cloth was tied over his face and he was 
lifted in by a half-dozen large men. A moment or 
two later they heard him fall to the floor. 

A stalwart man sprang to the opening, and the 
now rapidly gathering crowd cheered. He felt in 
the smoky blackness for the prostrate boy, and haul- 
ing the lad forward, put his head out of the window, 
and delivered his charge to his comrades. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


345 


Father, the powder! ” gasped Dorothy. 

Robert realized the doom that impended, and that 
the door must be opened. 

Let it blow up, Delafield ! cried a chorus of 
voices. “ We had better all run.” 

The crowd broke and dispersed for a minute, 
and in that interval Robert applied his key and 
cautiously opening the heavy door looked in. An 
uncertain light shone near the center, and just suffi- 
cient to reveal the heavy clouds of smoke that curled 
and waved in the still confined air. 

“ Don’t ! don’t ! father ! ” gasped Dorothy, in an 
almost voiceless whisper. 

“I must, dear daughter; and then— tie this 
towel over my nose and mouth — I can go to the 
place by feeling. Hold the door closed, Dorothy. 
Don’t let the air reach that flame yonder. See, 
there is a jet spurting up.” 

Dorothy did as she was bid. As well resist con-* 
science as the firmness of that inflexible “ I must.” 

Robert crept in on his hands and knees, realizing 
that his only safety was in keeping near the floor. 
Dorothy pulled the door sufficiently to to keep o-ut 
any draft, and felt as if she were sealing her father 
in his tomb. The crowd slowly drew nearer again, 
the fascination of the noble deed overcoming their 
fear. 

Dorothy strained her ear against the crack to 
hear her father’s fast approach, if he ever did return ! 
All kinds of noises surged in her dizzy, half-frenzied 
brain. No martyr, in all her religious readings, ap- 
peared so holy to her at that moment as he whose 
whole life had been consecrated to duty, to that 


346 


Dorothy Delafield. 


higher leading which is the polar star to, alas ! so 
few. Ah, she could not part with him in this way. 

All at once her heart stood still, as her straining 
ear heard the shuffling sound approaching; she 
opened the door, in another second her father held 
out the bag to her, which a dozen men reached to 
seize, and a great cry of thankfulness to God and 
cheers for Robert Delafield rang on the night air. 
Dorothy threw her arm around his neck and kissed 
him as he tore off the towel, and then his voice 
rang out, 

“ If the buckets are filled, pass them in this way ; 
we can save the neighborhood, if not my store.” 

Robert now flung the door open as the chain was 
formed, and as he did so the flame leaped up and 
gathered sudden headway. 

“ Let each man run in with his water and out in 
ten seconds, and it can be done.” 

Then followed a strange, weird battle with that 
one central fire. Dorothy never forgot how the 
men looked rushing in and out of the smoky and 
now brilliant interior, as the water was dashed upon 
the flames. 

The fire was extinguished in an hour, thanks to 
her father’s foresight ; and then, although it was 
near morning, nothing remained for them to do but 
to stay in that chilly and irritating atmosphere of 
the smoked and blackened place until the openings 
made by the axes could be closed, and they could 
ascertain the extent of the ruin. 

Toward day-break Robert’s two clerks sauntered 
in shamefacedly, as they had slept through what 
had been a great uproar for Quincy. Then, in the 


Dorothy Delafield. 


347 


gray light, Robert and Dorothy walked, hand in 
hand in mute but sympathetic fellowship, to their 
little home, where they washed off the smoke stains, 
ate a hurried breakfast, and prepared to go back to 
the scene of ruin. 

But Robert paused on the threshold and said, 

“ We have forgotten ouk morning prayers to- 
gether, daughter.” 

“ So we have, father dear, and surely we need the 
Lord with us to-day.” 

They kneeled down. A great dry sob broke 
from Dorothy, and then she smothered her feeling 
as the calm, even tones of her father’s voice rose 
from that family altar. 

What a dreary interval followed before the in- 
surance agent came to make his appraisal. 

After Robert had viewed the extent of the dam- 
ages, and realized that there was not an article in 
his store that was not water-soaked or smoke- 
stained, and practically valueless to him, he turned 
to Dorothy, and a radiant, half-pathetic smile spread 
over his features, sharpened and pallid from his 
fatigue and strain, as he said, 

“ We have our friends still, daughter. All these 
hundreds whom we have befriended will stand by 
us in this extremity.” 

Dorothy’s head sank involuntarily to one side in 
half-denial ; they had hardened so with their own 
troubles ; but she said nothing, for at this moment 
the insurance agent, a man who had always sneered 
at Robert’s vaunted goodness approached, rubbing 
his hands together and saying, briskly, 

“ Well, Delafield, not such a bad loss, after all ; I 


348 


Dorothy Delafield. 


don’t believe you will find over a quarter of your 
goods damaged.” 

“ They are all damaged,” said Dorothy, with se- 
verity. 

O, of course, of course,” and the keen black eyes 
of the agent winked facetiously, and he nodded his 
head. 

In her heart Dorothy wished her father would 
not recover a penny, and then, perhaps, he would go 
away with her without further delay; but when she 
looked at his spiritual face and saw the almost 
rigid settling of his features, her heart cried out 
anew. 

All day long she followed the steps of the agent 
and his associate, forcing a re-examination of the 
injured goods, and saving a few cents here and oc- 
casionally a dollar there by her insistency ; a sick- 
ening business, and a thing she could never have 
done but for the silent, pain-elated expression on 
her father’s face. He had always been able to 
plead for others ; he had so little assurance to even 
claim his own, in his fatigue and trustfulness ; he 
conquered the fatigue as the day faded into late 
afternoon with a sense of wounded confidence, and 
in the hour or two that remained fought for his 
rights, a man with men, and felt abased, betrayed, 
and discouraged as the day closed, with the insur- 
ance costs placed at one third the value of the 
goods. 

“ I don’t care for the money ; I never cared 
enough for that, when I consider those who have 
gone, and you who are left to me ; but I thought I 
had what money could not buy, daughter, and 


Dorothy Delafield. 


349 


every thing seems slipping away. What does it all 
mean?” and Robert stood in the midst of the 
smoked-begrimed place, patches of paint hanging 
in scales from the ceiling, a dingy sunlight strug- 
gling in through the darkened panes of glass ; boxes 
and bales and barrels and show-cases all dusty with 
their gray or sooty covering, and a rasping sicken- 
ing penetrating odor every-where that had parched 
their throats and weakened their eyes. 

“ O, father, we can only trust One, who never 
betrays and never neglects.” 

But Dorothy’s lips quivered as she tried to con- 
vey assurance with her tone, and Robert, realizing 
how tired she must be, said, 

“ Let us go home.” 

The wind swept up and across the hills as they 
fought their way to the little house, which was more 
than a shelter to them ; it was a hiding-place from 
the cruel, rapacious world ; and O, how cruel and 
hard and cold it seemed to Dorothy, as she lighted 
the candles and stirred the fire and busied herself 
in preparing something warm for their tea. 

“ Just one more chapter, papa dear, and then we 
will go away ; you and I. When the auction is over 
we will turn our backs on it all and begin life anew. 
Ah, God was fatherly to take mother and the chil- 
dren home. I hope they don’t know what we are 
going through.” 

Robert sat with his head bowed in his hands and 
made no answer. 

The day for the auction at length arrived. It 
had been found necessary to move the salable 
goods to the town-hall. Robert’s hope again re- 


350 


Dorothy Delafield. 


bounded as the day dawned, but in the week that 
had elapsed since the fire a conviction had grown 
on him that he must save something for Dorothy, 
in case he were taken away. Far and wide through- 
out the township the bill-heads had been posted, 
announcing the coming auction. Stocking feet that 
had hoarded a few dollars many a long day were 
untied and' the glittering pile counted. From 
neighboring hamlets and the surrounding valleys 
farmers, who had shunned Quincy of late during her 
hard times, drove into the village for a chance bar- 
gain. Neighbors put their heads together and 
agreed on joint bids. All Quincy, in fact, after 
unanimously agreeing that “ Delafield had had a 
terrible loss, and that a smoke out was worse than a 
burn out,” decided, nevertheless, that, since there 
was to be a sale, they must keep the bidding low 
and get what they could. Families whom Robert 
had trusted month in and out, and felt it his duty, 
no matter how much heavier his burden, to sustain 
during the panic that was visiting Quincy, suddenly 
unearthed secret savings, and the whole village start- 
ed forth to the auction with an eagerness and expect- 
ancy that had not animated the town for months. 

Robert ate his breakfast that sunny, but bleak, 
March morning with a tremor of excitement in his 
voice Dorothy had never heard there before, and 
her heart misgave her as she saw the trembling 
hand that conveyed his food to his mouth. Again 
he said, 

“ I feel quite hopeful, daughter ; it isn’t as if we 
were among strangers. We have suffered with 
these people, and they know that the hard times 


Dorothy Delafield. 


351 


and the fire have stripped us of about every thing, 
and I think it will be a good auction/’ 

Dorothy’s eyes looked volumes of love; her 
judicial mind wondered at hope that would not be 
dismayed, and she said, brightly, 

“ We will hope for the best, dear father.” 

Robert nodded his head approvingly. 

They closed the house together and went up the 
long hill together once more. 

A great crowd was already around the doors of 
the town-hall when they arrived. It surged back, 
a mass of hungry, speculating, joking men and 
women, who saw an opportunity for chance and 
jollity, and forgot the misfortune which made the 
occasion for it. 

Dorothy shrank within herself while clinging to 
her father’s arm, and there was something in both 
their faces that momentarily subdued those nearest. 

How the crowd rushed in through the open 
doors, hallooing, expectorating, pressing their way 
to the auction stand. 

Robert had decided to be his own auctioneer, 
for no one had been so successful for years in 
Quincy at church fairs, in disposing of the remnants 
at most favorable prices. 

Dorothy had pleaded with him to save himself 
from the friction and excitement, but in vain. 
“ His friends would be all around him,” and he was 
in a condition of restlessness that rendered the 
effort imperative. 

She placed herself a little behind his elevated 
stand, so as to be able to observe both him and the 
towns-people. 


352 


Dorothy Delafield. 


He threw back the locks that had fallen over his 
temples as he ascended, and began, with a facetious, 
jovial speech and a smile that played about his thin 
face and lighted up his high forehead, revealing 
anew to her breaking heart the attenuation of his 
form and features. 

O, would the end never come ? ” 

Fortunately, as he warmed to the excitement, he 
seemed to forget that the goods were his own, and 
he expatiated on their merits with all the readiness 
of a tongue to which words never lacked. 

But as the day advanced, and the more valuable 
and least damaged articles were offered, and still 
the bidding remained at such low figures, he realized 
all at once the greed of the motley crowd that hung 
about his stand and swayed back and forth, and 
gathered volume and bantered jokes and bids. 

His voice became high and thin, and still he pur- 
sued the weary task. On, late into the evening, 
he offered and persuaded, and at last exhausted, 
although the villagers still clustered there in un- 
appeasable, eager concourse, he announced the sale 
closed for that day, and as quickly as possible 
started home with Dorothy. 

They walked through the streets in weary silence. 
As Robert put his key in the door he said to 
Dorothy, in a half-whisper, and with all the hope 
and buoyancy gone, 

“ Daughter, I wish I might never walk down that 
hill again.” 

Dorothy leaned her head against his thin shoul- 
der, and they entered the dark house together. 

“You have me, father; I will never fail you.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


353 


“God bless you, Dorothy!” and again Robert 
found himself unable to raise his voice above a 
whisper. 

No misfortune in itself is even so dreadful as the 
anticipation of it. Dorothy felt calmer that deso- 
late evening than she had in weeks. What she had 
foreseen day by day through the long months of 
two solemn winters was upon them ; they were 
alone, friendless, poor, and her father prematurely 
old. But when this was said all was said. Life 
was before her, and she felt on the threshold of her 
real destiny. Where they would go she did not 
know, but any place was better than one whose as- 
sociations had been for years depressing. 

Once inside the house, the doors locked, the cur- 
tains drawn, and close beside each other at the little 
table placed before the fire, every thing seemed less 
full of forebodings to them. The one illusion which 
Robert might be said to have cherished was gone. 
A man’s friends are those of his own fireside, and 
he would better doubt and ponder long before com- 
mitting his welfare in any important matter to an 
outside person. A benefit not voluntarily proffered 
is better lost than sought. Robert had despised 
riches, had set fame aside as the evanescent glory 
of the ambitious ; but while doing right for right’s 
sake, he had cherished the thought that unperverted 
good was recognized by the most commonplace, 
and that living by the golden rule would win the 
esteem, nay affection, of his neighbors. 

That night, in his talk with his daughter, alter- 
nating with short reveries, his life passed before him 
as in a mirror; he thought himself a weak man 
23 


354 


Dorothy Delafield. 


among the weakest. Right was right, and he was 
not sorry for his life-long effort to do right. But 
he longed bitterly for his youth, and an opportunity 
to apply expediency to his actions, as long as one 
of two causes would have been occasionally as 
praiseworthy as the other, no matter what might 
have been the careless and illogical and temporary 
opinion of his associates. He a lover of applause ! 
He a man to crave appreciation ! He a lover of 
popularity! Yes, he had been all this, and had 
overlooked it till this crisis, deceived by the very 
purity of his general motive, by the general trend 
of a nature that allied him with whatever was noble 
and spiritual and refined. His one, subtle fault 
had overtaken him. 

He could not forgive himself. He could not re- 
turn the gaze of Dorothy’s loving eyes without bit- 
ter self-reproach. O, if he only could begin over ; 
but he was too old ! 

He gave expression to many thoughts like these, 
and Dorothy hushed him, the tears streaming down 
her face, for she knew that, so far as he had been 
conscious and had deliberated, self had never 
entered into his thought. Intuitively, perhaps, he 
had done what he accused himself of ; but what 
was that in the balance with his years of upright 
precept and consistent application. 

She told him over and over how saintly the very 
thought of him had been to her in the years of her 
absence from home ; what a help it had been to her 
youth that she could look to no event in his life 
when she had not believed that he both feared God 
and walked uprightly. . 


Dorothy Delafield. 


355 

I would not have you different, father, even if 
I could.” 

He smiled and took her hand and drew her to him, 
and they sat awhile in loving silence before retiring. 

Robert called to Dorothy in the night to come to 
him. 

She found him breathing heavily, a high fever 
parching his skin and glazing his eyes to unnatural 
brilliancy. 

“ Father dear, you are very sick,” and she brushed 
his hair, stiff and dry with the fever, back from his 
brow, and applied the simple remedies she was mis- 
tress of, until daylight should come. 

She went out in the first gray of the morning for 
an old nurse in the neighborhood, and then found a 
boy to drive to a town, ten miles distant, for a good 
physician. 

She returned to her home and prepared some 
light nourishment for the invalid, while her heart lay 
like lead in her bosom, and each breath threatened 
to choke her as it came and went. 

The old nurse shook her head when she saw Mr. 
Delafield, and went back and forth with a porten- 
tous face, or rocked herself with even movements, 
telling Dorothy, at every opportunity, how this 
neighbor and that had been taken, and how quick 
“ lung trouble ” ran its course. 

Dorothy would have sent her home had she dared 
assume the entire care of her father. She thought 
of those dreary piles of blackened goods and won- 
dered if they would remain forever unsold. She 
fancied their little house shut up, cold and dusty 
and unused, and her father and herself far away. 


356 


Dorothy Delafielu. 


Then a thought, that smote her with terrible fear 
and loneliness, seized her. What if she were left to 
lay her father beside the others ? That could not 
be ; and Dorothy ran away from herself back to the 
bedside, and sent the nurse to her tea so that to- 
gether she and her father might gain assurance and 
cheer. 

Robert looked greatly relieved as soon as they 
were alone. He clasped his fingers feebly around 
Dorothy’s. She sat on a stool beside him, her face 
near his. 

Dorothy, you must be brave ; I am going to 
leave you. It is better, under existing circum- 
stances, for me to go. Have the rest of the goods 
sold, and hold what money comes from them. The 
insurance pays the store debts. If you can, keep 
the interest paid on the mortgage of the house and 
keep it. We know what a roof is to cover our 
heads in trouble.” 

He gazed at her with mournful tenderness, and 
then closed his eyes for a few seconds, for he had 
spoken with great difficulty and with frequent pauses. 

“ I would go away, far away ; I don't see clearly 
what you are to do ; but there is a verse that covers 
it all : ‘I will bring the blind by a way that they 
knew not : I will lead them in paths that they have 
not known : I will make darkness light before 
them, and crooked things straight.’ ” 

After a long silence he said, solemnly, 

“ Life is a mystery, but the living may be all up- 
ward. Don’t forget that, Dorothy.” 

His voice died away on her name, and she kissed 
his lips between her sobs for a reply. 

/ 

/> 

I • 


Dorothy Delafield. 


357 


The nurse came back, shaking her head solemn- 
ly as she looked at the patient, and foreshadowing 
the verdict of the doctor, who entered with her. 

The winds, that had been the faithful accompani- 
ments of all of Dorothy’s joys and sorrows in 
Quincy, sprang into a gale as the sun set, and roared 
all night long, rocking the house and tearing great 
branches from the trees. It sank to rest toward 
morning, spent with its own fury, and as the masses 
of purple clouds that had attended it drifted below 
the horizon in the first morning light, Robert’s quiet 
mission in Quincy ended, and he, too, joined the 
company of the great unknown. 

Then followed the apotheosis which succeeds such 
a life. The very men and women who had accepted 
his charity through those two hard winters, and had 
then bought his burnt goods for as little as possible 
with the money they had hidden against a still 
greater time of need, wept tears “ over the only 
friend they had ever had.” There were memorial 
services in the several little churches, and all the 
ministers took for their text, by common agreement, 
“ Mark the perfect man.” 

A long, irregular, wavering crowd followed Doro- 
thy to the grave-yard on the hill-top, and then 
Quincy settled down again into the monotony of 
its misfortune, if not as much better, as Dr. Withers 
had hoped, from a life like Robert’s passed among 
them, certainly none the worse. 

In a few days Dorothy turned the key in the 
little house ; and, except as Quincy was the mauso- 
leum of her sacred dead, the lines of her life were 
laid amid other scenes. 


358 


Dorothy Delafield. 


(Shaptbi^ II. 


OROTHY’S college training had led her to 



hope that she might either lecture or write 


with some promise of success. Her mind recoiled 
with distaste from that avenue of effort common to 
the majority of educated women — the vocation of 
teaching. She connected it, in the greater number 
of her own teachers, with a repressed personality, or 
rasped, or exhausted nervous power. 

When she stepped on a western train at Quincy, 
with the purpose of returning to the college, her 
mind was made up to request its president to assist 
her in announcing in the town where she was edu- 
cated that she would deliver a lecture there. Many 
subjects presented themselves to her thought. Like 
her mother, she believed that women, as well as 
men, should have a set life-work. Before Dorothy’s 
pure vision but two things were present, a work 
and its accomplishment. Wh^t the work involved 
in mental, moral, or physical strain she did not 
stop to think. What might beset the path of a 
beautiful woman in accomplishing her purpose she 
was as incapable of conceiving as if she had been 
Spencer’s Una. In the intervals of her journey, 
when she was not revolving subjects in her mind, 
her thought and heart were with her beloved. She 
was not aware that her beauty appealed to many a 
fellow-traveler, awakening the idle curiosity of some 
and the sympathy of others, as they watched the 


Dorothy Delafield. 


359 


tall, grandly-formed woman, who was dressed so 
simply and severely in black, but looked too youth- 
ful and too sad to be traveling alone. 

She had entered upon the afternoon of the second 
day of her journey, and sat leaning against the side 
of the window, enjoying the sense of being among 
strangers, since there was no one to understand her 
grief. She had passed a succession of sequestered, 
cleanly looking villages ; just as the train was start- 
ing away from one, the thought occurred to her, 
“ Why not stop over at one of these little places and 
write my lecture, and then go on and be ready to 
deliver it immediately, if I can ? ” 

She spoke to the conductor about her baggage, 
and an hour later, half-bewildered at the suddenness 
with which she had executed her purpose, she 
found herself on the platform of a little station that 
overlooked a pretty village nestling in a valley. 

A few rods from the station a square, freshly 
painted house, with ‘‘The Globe Hotel” on its 
staring expanse, confronted her. At one side of it, 
however, a pine woods stretched away, with a whis- 
pering invitation, and Dorothy determined to try 
what shelter she could find in this microcosmic 
globe. 

It was a new house, resplendent within as well 
as without with paint, whose odor of turpentine 
had not yet exhaled. The man, who was proprietor 
and clerk in one, advanced to meet her with a 
trepidation and alacrity that showed him new to his 
business and still without boarders. 

Dorothy was as much a godsend to the Globe, as 
the hotel was a refuge for her. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


360 

She was taken up the wide stairs, shining with a 
brilliant oil-cloth in octagonal blocks of red and 
yellow, to a room that looked into the pine woods. 
Its new and faintly odorous matting, its set of 
bright yellow furniture and shades of vellum yellow 
were all, if not more beautiful, more cleanly in their 
newness, than she could have anticipated, and she 
asked the price with ill-concealed eagerness. 

“ I will take it for two weeks.” 

The proprietor bowed with delight. He took 
Dorothy’s name, but shot a quizzical anxious look 
at her when she gave it as Miss D. Delafield. 

Her two trunks allayed any momentary anxiety, 
but when he came back, a half-hour later, he said, 
with awkward circumlocution, which Dorothy had 
some difficulty in understanding, that it was his 
custom to have the first week in advance. 

“ Why, I can just as well pay for both weeks; I 
would rather, in fact.” 

And Dorothy gave him a smile of great sweetness 
as she handed him the money. 

“You don’t think you want to stay longer, if you 
should like it ? ” 

“ O, I know I shall like it ; I’ve come here to 
write. I’m on my way to Mentor College.” 

The man gazed respectfully at her, concluding 
that she was a great literary character, and that, 
doubtless, if he pleased her, his house would achieve 
an enviable notoriety. So, bowing again deferen- 
tially, he said, 

“ Well, I hope we can please you,” and then, as 
he was going out he thrust his head in and added, 
“ Perhaps, if you like it, you will write the Globe up.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 361 

Dorothy, beginning to dimly comprehend the 
meaning her confidence had conveyed, smiled irres- 
olutely, longing to disabuse her host and half-afraid 
of telling too much. 

He read the trembling little smile as a half-con- 
cession, and nodding again and saying, 

“ We’re determined to suit,” withdrew. 

There was a great noise in the poultry yard pres- 
ently. The plumpest spring chicken of the whole 
brood was caught and sacrificed on the altar of 
literary fame. When Dorothy ate her tea alone, an 
hour later, a half-dozen heads were thrust in the 
door at cautious intervals to see the vision of loveli- 
ness and learning that had stopped at the Globe on 
the very first day it opened. 

Dorothy was absolutely oblivious to the fact that 
she was alone on the floor where she slept, and 
alone where she ate her meals. No retreat of any 
sister was ever more fraught with blessedness to a 
meditating soul than was Dorothy’s chance and 
fortunate withdrawal to her from sight and people 
that had oppressed her for months. The days were 
mild and sunny, and with a shawl about her shoul- 
ders she sat by her open window, listening to the 
croonings of the pines while she thought and wrote 
on a subject which was all theory to her, and much 
the easier on that account to compass. All she had 
read and all she had heard and all she had thought 
on the ideal in woman’s life and effort she massed 
into a glowing semi-poetic effusion, which seemed 
to her the sternest logic, the most irrefutable argu- 
ment, and a scalus intellccius'' on which any 
woman might settle^ reach a solution of a question 


Dorothy Delafield. 


362 

which had been fermenting in the American mind 
for a decade of years. 

During the early hours of the evening following 
the completion of the task, with one tallow candle 
flickering in the resinous, piney atmosphere, she 
swayed back and forth in a little rocker, memorizing 
her work. Will and effort joined, and promptly at 
the end of her two weeks Dorothy locked her be- 
longings not more securely in her trunks than she 
had secured her lecture in her memory, and de- 
parted from the Globe, an increasing mystery of 
beauty and wisdom. 

She pursued her journey to Mentor, leaving the 
Globe waiting to this day for the article which she 
never found an opportunity to publish. 

The president of Mentor listened approvingly to 
her scheme. It was a time when the general desire 
all over the country was. for some new phase of en- 
deavor. Already one woman lecturer had spoken 
in Mentor, a woman with iron-gray hair and a gentle 
face, and her penetrating voice and sympathetic 
manner had won a score of followers to the temper- 
ance cause. 

A college center like Mentor was as favorable a 
spot as Dorothy could have selected for her maiden 
effort. The very ideality with which she invested 
the whole subject, the thought that perhaps she 
was about to achieve something not merely for her- 
self, but for all women, made her feel a certain 
sacredness which deepened at the same time both 
her dignity and her modesty. When she felt dis- 
mayed at the sight of the placards, which met her 
every-wheie about the town, announcing that 


Dorothy Delafield. 363 

Dorothy Delafield, a young and accomplished grad- 
uate of Mentor, was to lecture, she banished the 
sense of publicity that swept over her and buried 
her thought in her subject and her future. 

She had not altogether adjusted her mind to 
what would be her sensations in standing before 
several hundred people ; and when she did actually 
find herself in such a position, not a note to help 
her, nothing to rely on but a memory, which, al- 
though it had never yet served her treacherously, 
might nevertheless do so now, she felt the blood 
surge back into her heart, and for seconds, which 
seemed minutes, her mind was vacuous. 

Suddenly, as if her lecture were a book open be- 
fore her, she saw her thought in the words she had 
memorized, and the long pause during which she 
stood facing those expectant, curious eyes was much 
in her favor, for her still presence and commanding 
beauty gave a dignity to her opening words which, 
in reality, conveyed no original thought. 

But Dorothy was in earnest, and she believed 
she had a great truth to present in an entirely new 
way. Her seriousness and utter self-forgetfulness^ 
after she had fairly begun, won a hearing. If she did 
not convince old men and women, whether suffer- 
ing from headache or heartache, whether on Pisgah 
or in the Valley of Humiliation, that their ideals 
could just as well be their first thought instead of 
their last, she persuaded all the young men and 
young women present that it was a noble thing to 
have an aim in life, and that a woman might appear 
very beautiful and very sweet in giving utterance to 
such a trite doctrine. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


364 

Dorothy sat down in a glow after her effort, 
elated that she had not forgotten, thankful that she 
had at least gotten through, and in the reaction 
following her sense of deliverance, sure that she 
would never perform such mental acrobatics again. 

There was no way of exit at the rear, and as her 
consciousness returned she felt she would faint if 
the hall were not emptied soon. Then she all at 
once became aware that individuals of all ages were 
coming toward her. 

'‘They want to be introduced,” said President 
Cummings, who was at once her protector and sup- 
porter. 

O, if she could only flee from this publicity 
sweeping over her like a flood ! This was not what 
she had wanted. Surely giving a lecture did not 
mean that she belonged to all these people. But 
they were all around her now ; and then she shook 
hands and thanked them for their praise ; and pres- 
ently a random kind and complimentary word from 
a gray-haired gentleman, that her eloquence had 
quite inspired him with a belief in the rostrum for 
women, led Dorothy to advocate, with earnestness, 
what she was already half-convinced would be bet- 
ter left to men. 

One second the roses mounted into her cheeks 
with the elation that comes of success, and the next 
they mantled them just as hotly because she felt 
that she had only been a little more audacious than 
others of her college companions. 

But whatever the reason was, Dorothy’s first 
lecture was pronounced a great success, and if pub- » 
licity were trying, her sanguine, nervous tempera- 


Dorothy Delafield. 365 

ment began to know the sweetness of much and 
indiscriminate flattery. 

All the local papers spoke of the “ new star on 
America’s horizon,” of the “Juno of the rostrum.” 
One little monthly alluded to her as “ Hypatia 
turned Phoenix.” 

Truth compels me to state that in her inmost 
heart Dorothy finally said to herself, now and then, 

“ I must be wonderful.” 

One day, however, while glancing over the col- 
umns of a New York paper, she read what her eye 
seldom rested on, the theatrical and operatic 
news. There was a depressing sense of familiarity 
in the adulatory phrases which described now a 
Bowery actress and then a great operatic singer. 

“ Have I something in common with these 
women ? ” Dorothy asked herself. 

She clasped her hands in dismay. Dr. Withers 
and Mr. Thompson and Judge Pettibone seemed to 
be looking at her and saying, 

“ Dorothy Delafield one of them ! ” 

“ I am not ! I am not ! ” Dorothy exclaimed to 
herself. “ I want to do good. I have a work. It 
is a work for women ! ” but in making such excla- 
mations she also decided to read no more of the 
silly items that rang her praises. 

She took down her Bible and studied the epistles, 
but could not gain much comfort from them. She 
hoped she was living in the “ last days,” for there 
did seem to be a special work for women prophesied 
for that period, and Dorothy knew that she did not 
wish to do any thing that would bring reproach 
upon her religion. In that solitary hour her moth- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


366 

er’s earnest, passionate eyes seemed looking into 
hers, and with a kind of vow that in whatever she 
did she would think only of her mother, and that 
then she could not go wrong. She took out her 
writing materials preparatory to revising her lecture, 
for its crudities were beginning to confront her. 

She was interrupted, however, by a summons to 
the college parlor. 

President Cummings was there, and with him 
a gentleman, whose courtesy and elegance set Doro- 
thy’s compunctions about her publicity quite aside. 

She gazed into his clear, sparkling blue eyes as he 
explained the object of his visit; and the delicacy with 
which he invited her to speak two hundred miles 
from Mentor, at a State Sunday-school convention, 
led her to feel assured that she must be in a very 
right way after all. 

She felt inadequate to such an undertaking, but 
her compunctions were ruled aside, and she finally 
consented to write a short lecture, which would em- 
body her views on “ The work of the ideal Sunday- 
school teacher.” 

She had three weeks in which to prepare, and 
urged forward by Dr. Middleton, who thought that 
Dorothy could, perhaps, add something toward wid- 
ening opportunity for women, she worked with 
great assiduity and hope. 

Three weeks passed rapidly away. Dorothy 
traveled to her new field of effort under the special 
care of Dr. Middleton. He was like and yet so un- 
like Judge Pettibone. His blue eyes sparkled with 
humor or flashed with a paler, colder color in ordi- 
nary conversation. His manner at all times, how- 


Dorothy Delafield. 367 . 

ever, had a stately courtesy, and his tones a 
deference, when he spoke to women, that greatly 
pleased a susceptible nature like Dorothy’s. The 
beautiful kindliness, which was native to Dr. Mid- 
dleton, inspired his followers with a hero-worship, 
and as Dorothy sat by his side, hurrying to regions 
unknown to her, she became alarmed lest Dr. Mid- 
dleton had overestimated what she could do, and a 
great dread took possession of her, that if she dis- 
pleased or disappointed him, her work, as a lecturer, 
would be finished forever. 

True to the instincts of her sex, she found herself 
working to please an individual, no matter how 
much she was possessed with an idea. 

If Dorothy could have ultimately analyzed her 
motive, she would have realized that first and last 
and always the thought of pleasing a mother who 
seemed every-where present with her, led her for- 
ward in the pursuit of some signal success. Now 
that she had come under Dr. Middleton’s influence, 
it was easier, because natural to her temperament, 
to bend her whole energy toward meeting what she 
gathered from his conversation was his expecta- 
tion. 

** You cannot help having sensible and clear 
notions about conducting a class — say, for young 
girls — and if you tell us this in a simple manner, and 
throw all the sweetness of womanliness into it, of 
which you have a great deal, you can help us all.” 

He looked confidently and reassuringly into her 
eyes, and her desire to please him grew, while her 
belief in her own powers diminished. Then he 
talked to her a little on books, skimming over the 


. 368 


Dorothy Delafield. 


surface of the literature of the day, and she was 
glad and eager to pour forth the thought she had 
kept to herself throughout the long winter. 

The sun sank lower and lower through banks of 
mottled clouds, and finally lingered near the hori- 
zon in a red haze that sent great shafts of radiance 
up into the dark, gray sky — and still they talked. 

To Dorothy, nothing could have been more de- 
lightful — companionship that exhilarated without 
fatiguing, a little true sentiment, a little learning, 
and a great deal of pleasant manner ; a snug seat 
by a window that revealed the panorama of a gor- 
geous sunset. What was easier and pleasanter and 
more productive of culture than a career, if only 
one could keep her courage at white-heat and on 
the level of her convictions. 

But all too soon the night settled down around 
them. The blessed outside light gave place to the 
dingy yellow glare of the lamps. One delegate 
and another came to speak to Dr. Middleton as 
they neared their destination, and when, an hour 
later, the train crept into a long, covered station, and 
Dorothy rose to follow the others, a sudden thrill 
of loneliness and orphanhood filled her heart and 
suffused her eyes. 

Dorothy felt very thankful that her turn did not 
come till the next day. 

One by one her companions separated from her, 
and finally she found herself standing almost alone 
in the great, bare waiting-room, stricken with a sense 
of fear lest Dr. Middleton, in his haste, had gone 
away and forgotten her. But presently he entered 
the room, accompanied by a gentleman of very short 


Dorothy Delafield. 369 

stature, who carried a lantern. He introduced this 
gentleman to Dorothy as the Rev. Mr. Strong, add- 
ing, in parenthesis, “ the son of the Rev. Dr. Strong, 
a very noted divine.” 

The little man shook hands with Dorothy in a 
friendly, cordial way, and although his manner was 
most deferential, there was a gleam of furtive and 
amused curiosity in his eyes as he met her glance 
that made Dorothy’s waver a little. But the 
thought came to her that, of course, the first women 
who lectured would have such things to meet for 
those who came after them, and she was willing to 
seem like a hybrid or a monster until she had an op- 
portunity to prove that she was simply Dorothy 
Delafield, who had a message, and must, therefore, 
give it. 

Dr. Middleton explained that Mr. Strong would 
escort her to the home of one of his parishioners, 
where she was to be entertained during the three 
days of the convention. 

Dorothy’s sensations were far from pleasant as 
she picked her way over muddy crossings, stumbling 
occasionally as the lantern flickered or swung 
around on the wrong side. She had an indignant 
feeling that she was not met with a carriage, instead 
of being allowed to arrive in the plight she knew 
she would be in if she had to walk much farther 
through such impassable streets. 

Mr. Strong himself felt it incumbent to explain 
that he had not expected to meet a “ lady speaker,” 
and hoped she would excuse his apparent negli- 
gence. 

This completely disarmed Dorothy of any right- 
24 


370 


Dorothy Delafield. 


ecus resentment she had felt it necessary to cherish, 
and, although intimating that she was very sorry 
indeed to have to walk through such muddy streets, 
she assured him that she was strong, and that 
neither dampness nor distance would injure her. 

Her clear, sweet voice modified Mr. Strong’s 
opinions of “ lady speakers,” and when he reached 
the ample grounds, surrounding a fine old-fashioned 
homestead, he was quite prepared with what he had 
to say to Mrs. Oglethorpe, who was fondly expect- 
ing to greet Dr. Middleton himself, and not an un- 
known young woman, who proposed to do what Mrs. 
Oglethorpe felt not only she, but the Bible also, 
disapproved. 

Dorothy was ushered into a stately parlor, while 
Mr. Strong, hurriedly excusing himself, went into 
the hall to meet Mrs. Oglethorpe before she should 
see Dorothy and betray any surprise. 

He drew the old lady into an adjoining room and 
hurriedly explained that Dr. Middleton had insisted 
on giving his opportunity to a Miss Delafield, who 
had consented, at his urgent request, to speak before 
the convention. 

‘‘ A young lady, and in a Presbyterian church ! ” 

Mrs. Oglethorpe clasped her long, white, wrinkled 
hands in dismay, and the soft bunches of white 
curls, on either side of her face, shook as she slowly 
swayed her head back and forth disapprovingly. 

“ It is a dilemma ! ” and Mr. Strong laughed and 
urged ; ‘‘ but don’t visit your disapproval on Miss 
Delafield. She is evidently not a professional, and 
in deep mourning, too.” 

“ And beautiful, I dare say,” and Mrs. Oglethorpe 


Dorothy Delafield. 


371 

shook her head again. ** Beautiful and vain and 
ambitious ! ” 

“ She is a lady. Good manners, well-bred accent, 
and gentle. There is a history in all this.” 

“ Well, well ! ” said Mrs. Oglethorpe ; ‘‘ she is in 
the house of a lady, at all events. I will go with 
you to meet her. She must be hungry.” 

Dorothy stood in front of the mantel. As Mrs. 
Oglethorpe’s eyes fell upon her guest, she was 
surprised and touched. 

The journey and her anxiety had made Dorothy 
very pale. The gentle and sad face that appealed 
to the gracious old lady, as well as the deferential 
but dignified greeting with which her own was re- 
turned, made her think that Mr. Strong was right. 

“ This is very unpropitious weather for the con- 
vention. I hope you are not wet. If you will 
come with me, I will show you to your room,” and 
Mrs. Oglethorpe led the way up the broad stairs, 
while Dorothy again thought that, except for a dis- 
agreeable interval here and there, her experiences 
were not unpleasant. She did not dream that the 
old lady, who was playing the hostess to the utmost, 
was doing so because something about the young, 
strange woman, whom she had unexpectedly taken 
into her house, appealed to her motherliness and 
gentleness. 

Dorothy took fresh courage in her dismal heart 
over the praiseworthiness of her efforts, since they 
were indorsed by such a grave and elegant old lady. 
Mrs. Oglethorpe, on the other hand, wondered that 
she, of all persons, should appear to espouse the 
woman’s cause,” even when it took the form of a 


372 


Dorothy Delafield. 


lecture before a Sunday-school convention ; but, 
however that might be, she was determined to take 
proper care of Dorothy. 

Dorothy’s manner, like that of all young persons 
suddenly thrust into prominence, or having to rely 
on self, had an excess of dignity, alternating with 
timidity, which made her almost unapproachable. 
It was a rather silent supper, therefore, over which 
Mrs. Oglethorpe presided. For want of some sub- 
ject in common, the old lady asked Dorothy 
a great many questions, intended to be kindly; and 
Dorothy, realizing that, perhaps, she was on the 
verge of a long public career, and not having 
learned with whom and when it was necessary to 
be noncommittal, wrapped herself in a veil of un- 
natural reticence, which gave her manner and her 
voice a sad constraint. As is generally the case, 
the judgments of sixty years of age, if less romantic, 
arem.ore kindly than those of twenty-two ; and while 
Dorothy sat, anxiously saying to herself, “ I must 
not tell my affairs to every body — for all such ques- 
tions may arise from mere curiosity,” Mrs. Ogle- 
thorpe said to herself : “ Poor child ! She is 
feeling her way at every step. I hope she will get 
tired of such melancholy exposure and give it up, 
or, better still, get married.” 

There was a questioning deprecation in Dorothy’s 
eyes which made Mrs. Oglethorpe feel like folding 
her to her bosom, and Dorothy said to herself, 
“ She looks so good. I would like to put my arms 
around her neck.” This thought and another sad- 
der one, that there was not a person in the world to 
whom she could go as to a mother, suffused her eyes. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


373 


“ My dear, you are too tired to go out to-night,” 
and Mrs. Oglethorpe put her hand on Dorothy’s 
shoulder. 

All at once Dorothy let her reticence fly to the 
winds, and she said, while her cheeks flushed 
crimson, 

“ O, I must go and get used to the church and 
the sight of the people before to-morrow night. I 
have only spoken once before, and I feel very nerv- 
ous about my subject ; but Dr. Middleton feels sure 
that it is right and suitable.” 

Mrs. Oglethorpe looked immensely relieved, and 
replied, 

I was sure that were not making speaking 
a profession. I suppose you are doing this because 
Dr. Middleton is your friend ; but I would never 
do it again, even for a friend,” and Mrs. Oglethorpe 
added a kiss to her admonition. 

Poor Dorothy ! She was not so foolish as to 
believe that all men would speak well of her,” let 
alone think well of her; but whenever she met some 
one like Mrs. Oglethorpe, all the femininity in her 
nature cried out for such a person’s approval. 

If the reader feels out of patience with her for 
not knowing her own mind better, he must under- 
stand that Dorothy was only perfectly sure of one 
thing : that it was necessary for her to pursue a 
career, but she was not at all sure what that career 
should be. She was lecturing because she did not 
believe that the platform would or could interfere 
with her womanly development, or that she 
must necessarily meet with what would try the 
delicacy of a refined woman. Outside of all this, 


374 


Dorothy Delafield. 


she cherished and nursed a belief that every woman, 
married or single, would be larger and better with 
a set work. But this belief was purely theoretical ; 
she knew no woman who was larger and better just 
because she had followed undeviatingly a pursuit 
outside of home. 

But as Mrs. Oglethorpe spoke she realized that 
the politeness and deference she had received had 
been given, not to the career, but to herself, and she 
wondered, with a sharp sense of future possibilities, 
what her sensations would have been if she had en- 
tered the home of a so-called lady to whom noblesse 
oblige was an unknown quality. 

So, while the color mounted to her very eyes, she 
said, 

I may do it many more times ; I must do some- 
thing — and I think I ought to do something, and 
just now, this kind of work seems the best for me.” 

Mrs. Oglethorpe smiled regretfully and shook 
her head dissentingly, and said, 

“ You would much better teach. By and by 
you will lose something if you come in constant 
contact with strangers in this way. It wont be 
always as it is here in my home.” 

“ O, I am afraid not. But if I could meet suc- 
cessfully the objections you name, see what a work 
I could do for women.” 

“ Men will have to do the work for women, and 
until there are enough good men to mold a larger 
and better life for them than they have now, bad 
men will make opportunities for themselves out of 
these so-called careers for women. The flow of a 
gentle little river can’t resist the tide of the ocean.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


375 


At this moment Mr. Strong entered to escort 
them to the church, and Dorothy was glad not to 
argue longer on a subject which she felt her own 
experience must settle for her. 

The church was a large brick edifice, with seating 
capacity for a thousand people. It had a high pul- 
pit. Audience-room and galleries were filled to 
repletion, for a State Sunday-school convention 
was an event in the town. 

Far above the congregation — for the lofty pulpit, 
with its steep, winding stairs on either side, seemed 
an inaccessible eminence — stood Dr. Middleton. 
Seated in chairs around the pulpit were scores of 
ministers of various denominations. Beside Dr. 
Middleton, in a high chair with a mitered back, and 
with much episcopal dignity, sat a tall, attenuated 
gentleman, with a lofty forehead, from which his 
scant, black locks were brushed back. His mouth 
was firm, his whole countenance severe and intel- 
lectual. He was the pastor. 

At the last minute, because of the probable large 
attendance, it had been found advisable to transfer 
the convention from Mr. Strong’s church to this 
one of ample dimensions for any need. 

Dr. Middleton, with a view to having the interest 
cumulative, had appointed Dorothy’s effort for the 
second evening. 

She slept little on her return with Mrs. Ogle- 
thorpe, after hearing the speeches and arguments 
of a half-dozen teachers and superintendents. She 
reproached herself for not hearing more of what was 
said, and wondered whether every body, who made 
speeches, underwent the sleepless agony with which 


Dorothy Delafield. 


376 

she had now been a second time familiar. She 
thought that if she could only forget her own part 
until the time came for her to speak, she might 
gather many valuable ideas, and, perhaps, find 
something to alter in the speech she had prepared. 
But all these reflections were of no use. Th6re was 
nothing to be done but to exist. 

Dr. Middleton was full of pleasant confidence in 
Dorothy’s courage and ability. He had long ago 
settled the mooted question on “ women speaking 
in churches ” in his own mind ; and, therefore, al- 
though of a different denomination from the pastor 
of the church where the convention was held, it did 
not occur to him to ask permission for Dorothy. 
It was too difficult a matter to find interesting 
speakers for such an occasion, moreover, to do 
otherwise than congratulate himself on the novel 
feature that he had added. The plain but spacious 
old churches had never been decorated with flowers 
before, but, possessed as it was for the time being 
by all denominations, when the second day came a 
spirit of enthusiasm seized the young people of the 
town, and the railings of the slim banisters were 
garlanded ; pots of ferns and lilies and blooming 
roses flooded either side of the tall desk, and a sense 
of fellowship and successful efforts pervaded every 
heart, and for the time mooted doctrine and denom- 
inational differences were forgotten. 

Dr. Middleton had promised Dorothy in the 
morning that a place should be made for her in the 
chancel, as she was the only woman to speak, and 
had expressed a dislike to standing in such an ele- 
vated place as the pulpit. 


Dorothy Delafield, 


377 


She was seated half-way down the church to es- 
cape observation until her turn came. A sense of 
exhilaration filled her pulse. Flashes of hot and 
cold nervous feeling took possession of her ; but her 
brain was clear, her thoughts flowed with electric 
rapidity. She felt she could speak, even if she for- 
got what she had prepared. By and by there was 
a pause. 

She watched Dr. Middleton coming down the 
aisle toward her with a kind of ecstatic calmness 
she had never experienced before. She was fright- 
ened and yet self-possessed. O, if this feeling could 
only continue. When she rose her knees smote 
together, and yet she had the power to walk. She 
had a consciousness of self-possession that made her 
like an electric battery to herself. Side by side with 
Dr. Middleton she walked up the long aisle. When 
they reached the chancel he stepped to one side, 
and all the way was closed to Dorothy except a 
little winding staircase. 

She turned to Dr. Middleton, as if he must make 
way for her, but his blue eyes were shining and 
conciliatory, and he beckoned up the stairs. 

Dorothy began to ascend, but with every step 
her limbs tottered ; she would have taken hold of 
the flowery banister, but its irregularity gave her a 
feeling of dizzy insecurity. At last ! She was up. 

She faced those hundreds. Those near enough 
to see her beheld a colorless face in a rim of black. 
Her fair hair made a halo against it. Her eyes, ex- 
panded and solemn, shone like stars. Her clear 
bell-like voice trembled in unison with her whole 
frame. As she began a thrill crept through her 


378 


Dorothy Delafield. 


nerves, her knees smote each other anew, and out 
from her went that mesmeric power which is the 
possession of great eloquence, and the experience 
of any man or woman capable of intellectual ex- 
altation. Dorothy’s very being went out in that 
thrill, and all over the vast audience it communi- 
cated itself ; the church was so still that the volume 
of her voice reached every corner. Her mental 
clearness continued till she had finished. She 
thought she had spoken twenty minutes, but she 
had occupied forty, and how much of what she said 
had been written and how much was extempore 
she never knew. 

The audience went mad with enthusiasm as she 
returned to her seat, her eyes downcast, a sense of 
utter weariness throughout her frame as she walked. 
All the speakers who followed apologized for mak- 
ing an effort after the eloquent appeal for higher 
methods of teaching they had heard from Miss 
Delafield. 

Even Mrs. Oglethorpe adjusted her gold-rimmed 
eye-glasses, and, looking at Dorothy, said to herself, 
“ It is wonderful ; ” but, all the same, she hoped 
Dorothy would never speak again. 

The last speech apparently had been made, and 
the audience showed signs of dispersing, when there 
was a lull in the whispering, for the stately old 
pastor who had sat right in front of Dorothy and 
had followed with deep gravity every word that she 
had said, began to ascend the pulpit ; there was 
something about him also that commanded instant 
attention. He stood a minute with his hand on 
the Bible. Then he spoke of its sacredness, of its 


Dorothy Delafield. 


379 


uselessness religiously, except as it was considered 
an infallible guide; and then, turning to the epistles, 
he read, in a deep voice and with much gravity, all 
those passages relating to women. He then paid a 
tribute to Dorothy’s gift in speech — this was not to 
be denied ; then to her youth, and that youth was 
the season when we expected and condoned mis- 
takes of judgment; and then, with a tremulous 
voice, he dwelt on the sacredness of his office, that 
he was, above and beyond every other duty, their 
spiritual teacher, and that, unpleasant as it was, 
and even while seeming to differ with so wise and 
so learned a man as Dr. Middleton, he must raise 
his voice against the innovation that had been 
made, and which had been done without his con- 
sent. He hoped the young speaker would lay her 
gift on the altar of domestic seclusion, for the pos- 
session of it was no more proof of her duty to use 
it than for a violet, because it was fragrant and 
beautiful, to feel that it must be transplanted to the 
highway so that more might enjoy its sweetness. 

There was such an evident grim performance of 
duty that was disagreeable that the pastor made 
those hundreds respect the honesty of his con- 
victions, and Mrs. Oglethorpe could not refrain from 
whispering td Dorothy, 

“ It is hard, dear ; but you will find that he is 
right.” 

But while the old pastor had cleared his con- 
science he had made more of a heroine of Dorothy 
than ever. To be a heroine, however, is to bear 
the martyrdom of St. Lorenzo, and even Pericles 
was wiser in a larger sense doubtless than he meant, 


38 o 


Dorothy Delafield. 


in saying that the woman of whom neither evil nor 
good is spoken is fortunate. A woman whose 
name is the property of the public too often has to 
harden into coarseness, or degenerate into morbid 
sensitiveness ; and poor Dorothy was walking in a 
straight road to a pathway flanked by these two 
dangers, while her heart was smiling and her vision 
obscured with an unattainable ideal. 

She was besieged with callers. Little perfumed 
notes, containing a flutter of condolence, much sym- 
pathy, and kindly meant offers of support and en- 
couragement in her profession which the writers 
were neither sufficiently practical nor powerful to 
give, poured balm on her wounds, but left her just 
as open to future attacks. 

Her lecture, and the arguments which excited the 
little town during the remaining day of her stay on 
the questions as to whether a woman should speak 
in a church : and if she did, whether it should be in 
more sacred precincts than the lecture room ; and 
if this were allowed, whether any circumstance, such 
as a Sunday-school convention, for example, would 
permit of her standing in the space just below and 
in front of the pulpit ; and whether there were any 
thing, per se^ blasphemous or profane in her speak- 
ing behind the desk itself where the ifiinister offici- 
ated — all this was hotly contested. 

Dorothy was glad when the hour came for her to 
take the train North, although she dreaded leaving 
behind her the fresh green grass, the budding trees, 
and the early flowers. She carried with her every- 
where such a sorry, aching, timid heart ; her loneli- 
ness was so intense that she was glad of the external 


Dorothy Delafield. 


381 


signs of nature’s resurrection that greeted her eye^ 
in this Southern town. Just now all the exuber- 
ance of her mental activity, her aspiration to be and 
do something nobler than the average unoccupied 
and untrammeled woman, had received sufficient 
check for her to have a feeling of real shame over 
the half-dozen invitations she had received from 
ministers of various towns to speak before their 
congregations. She did not know whether she 
would or not, she did not care whether she ever 
lectured again or not, if she could only reach Men- 
tor in safety, and shut herself within the little room 
that was hers so long as she chose to occupy it. 

She had been given $25 for her talk, and this 
quite .swelled her purse. She could afford to con- 
sider. 

Dr. Middleton had engagements that called him 
in an opposite direction, and so, at the last minute, 
Dorothy had an added feeling of homesickness as 
she was placed under the care of a Mr. Maverick. 

Her escort was a huge man whose breadth was 
tremendous. He had a kindly, ruddy, practical 
face, and looked at Dorothy with a quizzical, puz- 
zled expression, as if she were a specimen he were 
in doubt whether to more admire or dread. 

He felt it incumbent to occupy the same seat 
with her on the dreary train they took, which 
stopped at every hamlet and whistled and rang and 
jolted until noise and motion became exasperating. 

Dorothy glanced up at the height and breadth 
that towered above her and gave her a feeling of 
being packed in against the window. 

Her companion talked incessantly the first hour 


Dorothy Delafield. 


382 

to her about my wife and my children ” until, 
though she wished no harm to come to these inno- 
cent creatures, she sincerely hoped that she would 
never meet beings so constantly possessed. 

Then he paused a long while, and then began to 
“ suppose ” to Dorothy that she had been severely 
educated. 

“ Ever studied Latin ? ” 

Dorothy bowed. 

“ Greek, too ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ All the ologies, too, and sciences, I dare say ? 
What’s a woman going to do with such knowl- 
edge?” 

Dorothy smiled sweetly, or tried to do so. 

“ Think you can use it in your lecture ? A kind of 
discipline, perhaps, that would show in the thought. 
Ever studied logic?” 

Dorothy smiled assent. 

I believe I could soon puzzle you with a ques- 
tion. Never met a male college graduate that I 
couldn’t corner in five minutes. What’s the chief 
export of Greece ? ” 

Dorothy could not tell. 

^‘Currants!” and her interlocutor nodded his 
head to her with an “ I told you you couldn’t.” 

A bird flew past their vision. 

What makes a bird fly? ” 

Dorothy was too vexed and too terrified to speak. 

“ Hollow legs; principle adopted in architecture. 
Study nature and study life, and you’ll get along! ” 

Another silence ensued. Her companion looked 
at her again. 


Dorothy Delafield. 383 

Father dead ? ” — this in a subdued voice, as if it 
might throw light on a subject which perplexed him. 

Dorothy gravely bowed. 

Mr. Maverick remained still a long time, and 
then, edging with difficulty out of the seat, he an- 
swered Dorothy’s glance with a broad, kind smile 
and said, 

“ Guess I’ll go and have a smoke.” 

Experience seldom instantly produces a crystal- 
lized decision. Experience which is eager to in- 
stantly transmute itself into action is not often 
valuable. Dorothy had been gaining some vivid and 
lasting impressions. She refused to recognize them, 
but they were nevertheless permanent possessions 
of her memory. She would have condemned her- 
self for acting upon them to such an extent did she 
ignore them ; yet they modified the tone of her 
thought. 

Her intellectual pride deepened. She desired to 
write something that was good in itself, whether it 
were ever heard or praised. Through being ob- 
served, she grew more observing. Through feeling 
the bitterness and the sweetness of impulsive con- 
demnation or flattery, she developed forbearance in 
speech. She exercised a constant restraint over 
herself, and being thus a law to herself in higher 
things, she gradually delivered herself from that 
petty constraint which reduces an ordinary nature 
to trivial monotonousness. Incidentally, therefore, 
even should she find that a career dogmatically pur- 
sued was a mistake, her mind was expanding and 
her character broadening. 

There is a certain largeness of thought and spirit- 


3^4 


Dorothy Delafield. 


uality of perception, dependent neither upon oppor- 
tunity nor circumstances, but upon the power 
evident in some individuals to abstract life for itself 
from every phase of experience. Dorothy possessed 
this power. While very happy, therefore, sometimes 
even exultant, when her lectures were well re- 
ceived, she was never very unhappy over outward 
defeat. It all meant something, and that something 
could always be converted into good. 

The spring glided into summer, the summer into 
autumn, and the passing months recorded many a 
strain, not a few tears, much travel, and a purse 
comfortably filled for her simple needs. 

Dorothy had proved one question ; she could sup- 
port herself with her lectures, no matter what their 
intrinsic excellence. 

After a time the railway journeys at all hours of 
the day and night grew tedious. It was no longer 
romantic and novel to meet strangers. The shock 
from rude questions and curious stares had ceased 
to oppress her with an undefined dread, but they 
offended her taste to such an extent that her 
thought turned anxiously at times to some other 
avenue of support and usefulness. She occasionally 
grew alarmed lest her nervous exhilaration before 
an audience should cease to be possible, for during 
the two or three times when she had spoken with 
that mental indifference which meant simply occu- 
pying the hour perfunctorily, she discovered that 
the audience, which was friendly in the beginning, 
became critical and restless toward the close. It 
was herself, her very life, that must be given out in 
a lecture, or her opportunities to lecture would cease. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


385 


To keep her enthusiasm, therefore, she spent every 
possible spare moment in composing new lectures, 
in reading on subjects as they presented themselves, 
in imbuing her mind with the moral aspects of 
questions, and thus giving voice to that spiritual 
longing always uppermost in the quality of her 
thought. Her vanity became chastened. 

On the other hand, from living constantly in her 
effort for a future hour, she lost a healthy, youthful 
enjoyment in the present. Life became work, and 
only work. The changing conditions of her life af- 
forded her no opportunity for friends or social ties 
of any kind. Unless she could do good or earn 
money, her place in the world became a blank. 
But to do good or to earn money, or even to accom- 
plish both, is not sufficient for any nature; least of 
all for one like Dorothy’s, that had received its bent 
in a home where all the ties were pure and sweet 
and loving. 

She longed for a home until it seemed as if her 
heart would break. 

After a time she rented a room in a town which 
had attracted her admiration, and thither, in the 
intervals when she was fatigued or needed to study, 
she repaired. It became the sweetest place in the 
whole world to her. It was her own place. Let- 
ters could reach her there. She could say she lived 
in such and such a place. It was a tie, the one 
poor little tie she had. She learned to buy little 
presents for this room. She apostrophized it some- 
times, as if it were a living being. 

There was a wistful tender look in Dorothy’s 
eyes that deepened as the months passed, but other- 
25 


Dorothy Delafield. 


386 

wise there was nothing to indicate to her numerous 
listeners and admirers that she was not an especially 
happy and fortunate woman. Many a young girl 
in listening to her sighed for her mind, her skill, 
and her opportunity. She acquired the air of a 
woman of the world. Her manner was self-pos- 
sessed, dignified, often to coldness. She was well 
dressed, handsome, always with much to do, always 
wanted somewhere by somebody. But she was not 
wanted by any body who loved her. How different 
the warmth coming from the admiration of love 
and from the admiration of popularity. 

Dorothy’s heart was in danger of growing cold 
for want of expression outside of generalities. It 
was because of this sense of loneliness, deepening 
'almost into desperation, that she spent more and 
more time in composition, grew more and more in- 
terested in the journeys which led her back to her 
room^ though oftener and oftener of a possible 
occupation that would allow her to live in one spot 
and form friendly relations. Sometimes the little 
house in Quincy, unoccupied now so many long 
months, recurred to her ; she knew she ought to go 
back and rent the house; she longed and dreaded 
to visit those other narrow abodes which held all 
she could grasp in real thought of her beloved. 
She took care that they were kept in good order, 
but to go there and see the grass growing, the very 
flowers blooming in the sod that covered her grief, 
no, she could not do that yet ! If she had just one 
of those dear ones to weep or to rejoice with her, 
it would be different. How different it would be if 
her mother could be beside her, a living, loving, ap- 


Dorothy Delafield. 387 

preciative mother, for whom she could work. But 
there was no one on earth ; and the silence of the 
multitude in heaven, who could break that and hear 
a voice of comfort ? 

During one of these lonely evenings she received 
a letter containing an urgent invitation to speak 
before a body of thirty ministers. Others were to 
be present, but her address was to be directed es- 
pecially to this reverend company. 

Dorothy dropped the letter in deep thought. 
The men were doubtless all older, much older, than 
she was. Many of them, like herself, were college 
bred, and, in addition, had all the training of their 
theological course. They had supplied the theme : 
“ The Spirit of the Christian Worker.” 

She had been familiar through her girlhood with 
these conferences of ministers, meeting together for 
the discussion of religious and literary subjects, and 
she knew that a broad treatment of her subject 
would be acceptable. 

The letter was very urgent, very cordial, very 
deferential. She shrank from the ordeal, and yet 
desired to test her power to intellectually interest 
such a company. She was further inspired to make 
the effort, because the invitation was honorary. It 
was something different. It was talking to her 
peers ; yes, to her superiors. 

She wrote her acceptance late that evening, and 
then set to work the next day with a courage and 
zeal that were spontaneous. This would, indeed, be 
a test of her ability. She performed her work with 
the spirit of a Methodist or a Quakeress. She 
prayed often over it. She eliminated passage after 


388 


Dorothy Delafield. 


passage that seemed to her, on a second or third 
reading, to convey little thought or wrong thought. 

When her lecture was finished, it summed up all 
that Dorothy had experienced and that she believed 
on the subject ; and so, though her head ached to 
dizziness, when the time arrived for her effort she 
stood before those ministers, and the rather sparse 
audience who were not to be daunted by the re- 
puted tediousness and technicality of the conference 
discourses with a certain solemnity of expression 
and manner that perfectly divested herself and her 
effort of any thing sensational. 

She spoke gravely, and was heard with the deep- 
est gravity. She felt as she thought a minister 
might who was preaching a sermon. She was en- 
tirely lifted above any consciousness of self, except 
as she hoped her thought would commend itself to 
the intelligence of the group of intellectual men 
who listened at once respectfully and critically. 

At the conclusion she was introduced in a manner 
that delighted her. There was no inconsequent 
flattery, no invidious remarks that she was a phe- 
nomenal woman; nothing but a kindly interchange of 
opinion, a frank agreement or difference, a cordial 
thank you, or an open manly expression of a desire 
to hear her speak at another conference. 

It was the first and only time that Dorothy had 
not been obliged to listen to fulsome flattery about 
her eloquence, her power to captivate, to allusions 
to her beauty, to something, in short, that always 
left her with an uncomfortable consciousness that 
she had either done well for a woman, or merely as 
a woman, and that youth, beauty, a flow of Ian- 


Dorothy Delafield. 389 

guage and femininity were a delightful combination 
on the rostrum. 

She did not quite know how her lecture had im- 
pressed her hearers till several days later, when she 
received a terse and deferential request for her 
MS., as the conference had unanimously voted to 
print it as one of the ablest papers read before their 
body. 

The next invitation that came to Dorothy was to 
speak in the opera-house of a large city, to give a 
“popular lecture.” She was offered $100. 

She again considered very gravely, and again ac- 
cepted, but this time with the resolution half- 
formed of soon withdrawing from her profession 
and trying another. She earned her money, re- 
ceived more applause than usual, had bouquets sent 
to her, letters seeking introductions from widow- 
ers, brokers, and college students ; long paragraphs 
in the papers comparing her in substance, if not in 
words, with Demosthenes, Burke, and Webster ; 
and many auguries about the beneficial effects to 
accrue to the business world, since women like her- 
self would add the presence of their purity and 
loveliness and femininity to that of something very 
different. 

Dorothy realized the nonsense of supposing 
that a woman could not remain sweet and essen- 
tially uncontaminated by a career. The nineteenth 
century was not the century of paladins or of the 
round table. The civilization of the day was pro- 
saically protective. Nevertheless, no matter how 
fully nineteenth century civilization accepted the 
mergement of what was once the exclusive enjoy- 


390 Dorothy Delafield. 

merit of the social circle into semi-business relations, 
it might be a question of social statics whether the 
results would indicate a retrogression or progression. 

Dorothy never felt abashed or humiliated that 
it chanced to be she who was an experimentalist. 
She did not think less or more of other women who 
had “ careers.” The point she philosophized over 
oftenest was the resultant arising from many condi- 
tions that made such things possible. 

The moral, social, and business conditions that 
had grouped themselves in such a way as to elimi- 
nate, in all highly civilized countries, a new term in 
class nomenclature — “ the working woman ” — were 
the object of her reflections. And since *men had 
molded society until this class had become a con- 
spicuous fact, she felt that the burden of proof lay 
wholly with men, what was to be done with the 
hundreds of thousands of women in her own coun- 
try, Great Britain, and Europe, whom they, in the 
succession of their generations had, in the nine- 
teenth century, left unprovided either with support 
or protection. If ridicule or reproach belonged 
anywhere, it belonged with the dominant sex — 
what great social law, either broken, or, rising into 
prominence, lay underneath these new and curious 
conditions. 

Dorothy never for a moment doubted but that she 
must work. Her tastes and temperament, merely, 
belonged sufflciently to the old order of things to 
make her desire what, traditionally speaking, had 
in the past been feminine environment. Precisely 
what such an environment, in its largest sense, meant 
she could not define ; but she doubted whether it 


Dorothy Delafield. 


391 


could be found and kept in the profession of 
lecturing. 

So one quiet evening, with her feet crossed on 
the fender before her little open fire, she decided, 
after a long revery, that since she was so much 
alone, so entirely alone in the world, she might 
just as well make another experiment, while still 
utilizing some of the resources she had gathered. 



392 


Dorothy Delafield. 


^HAPTEI^ III. 


OROTHY’S acquaintance was a wide one, so 



that it was a comparatively easy matter for 


her to act upon her resolve. She turned the key 
upon her quasi-home one bright morning in Oc- 
tober, with enough money in her purse to enable 
her to live comfortably three or four months, and 
with several letters of introduction in her pocket, 
and started to New York with an elation and buoy- 
ancy that rendered the journey delightful. 

She stepped on shore from the ferry as the boat 
settled in its slip at Barclay Street, made her way, 
with youthful eagerness, up the dingy approach to 
West Street, and, not waiting for a policeman, 
glided in and out among the drays and cars that 
crowded that busy thoroughfare. In a few minutes 
she was crossing the sunny expanse of City Hall Park. 

Dorothy’s sense of locality was not very accurate, 
so that she wandered around in some confusion 
before finding a black, dilapidated structure that, 
notwithstanding its absolute forlornness, contained 
the presses of the mighty organ through whose 
columns she hoped to make a beginning with her 
pen. She groped her way up winding, rickety stairs 
and emerged into a space branching off into small 
dark halls, with doors hanging loosely and unevenly 
on their hinges. The heavy whirring sound of 
printing-presses filled the air. 

She lifted a latch, a sudden timidity taking pos- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


393 


session of her, and a half-regret that she had left a 
path whose very deviousness she understood. She 
came face to face with a boy, who led her to one 
of the rickety editorial sanctums of the great news- 
paper, and in another minute found herself en- 
sconced in a leather revolving-chair, that persisted in 
swinging round if she turned ever so slightly. She 
tried to read her probabilities in the visage before 
her, as the editor perused the letters she gave him. 
He laid them down finally, placed his hands 
on either arm of his chair, and looked at her 
speculatively. 

“ It’s an up-hill road ! ” 

Dorothy smiled propitiatingly. 

“ I would like to try it,’’ she replied, with sufficient 
naivete to make the face of the florid editor relax. 

“You do not look altogether adapted to the 
rough work of a beginner,” he remarked, cursorily, 
while glancing at her daintily-gloved hands and 
well-fitting garments. “ There is a great deal of 
exposure to the weather in reporting, and there 
are ten men ready for ‘ every chance.’ But, if you 
wish to try — ” 

“ You do not have to come in contact with people 
in this work, do you ? ” now asked Dorothy. 

“ Don’t you like that ? ” asked the editor, with a 
gleam of curiosity in his eye. “ If the newspapers 
ever realize their dream of the reporter’s function, 
the art of meeting people and asking questions will 
be so developed that we shall have a mass of ma- 
terial for the press at present inaccessible.” 

“ But that will do away with all privacy ! ” and 
Dorothy’s eyes expanded. 


394 


Dorothy Delafield. 


The editor bowed his head in confirmation. 

“ Privacy is an old-fashioned term. It will soon 
be obsolete. We are approaching a time when 
we shall all be public men and women. Co-oper- 
ation, communism, and reporting are all phases of 
the same movement. Why, ten years hence we 
shall know the name of every young girl whose 
family is of social importance ; what she wears and 
where she wears her fine dresses ; we shall know 
how much the wives of all our city officials eat, and 
where they go summer or winter. Every body in 
New York will be catalogued and diagnosed and 
appraised sooner or later. After we have made 
such a thing the fashion, we shall be paid so much 
an agate line by all the Misses Grundy to tell what 
they eat and where they go.” 

They both laughed at the absurd picture. 

Suppose you try reporting. I wont give you 
the live stock market, although the best reporter 
in the city of live stock is a woman. Tall, strong, 
masculine — smart as Wall Street ! She is a charac- 
ter. You will have a fine opportunity to study 
character as a reporter.” 

Dorothy did not know whether the editor in- 
tended to entertain or to horrify her ; but having 
put her hand to the plow, she was determined not 
to turn back. 

“ I will give you fairs or lectures to begin with. 
How will that do ? ” 

“ That will do,” said Dorothy, a little faintly. 

“ Do you write short-hand ? ” 

“ No,” replied Dorothy, with alarm. “ But I can 
remember almost verbatim what I hear.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 


395 

The editor looked a little incredulous, and re- 
marked that she would find it a heavy strain to 
listen closely and then go home and clothe, in fair 
English, a half-column in time for press. He 
glanced over*his memoranda. He took off his eye- 
glasses with a wave, and, holding them extended 
over the arm of his chair, said : 

“ Here is the fair at the Seventh Regiment 
Armory. That will do. Hand this card to Mr. 
Tufton, whom you can inquire for. He will intro- 
duce you to the ladies at the different stands, and 
I will warrant they will tell you what to say. I 
suppose we shall have to give the fair a half-column. 

‘ Miiltu7n in parvo' You mustn’t weep if you find 
your best things cut out.” 

“ It wont be creative work,” said Dorothy, smil- 
ing. She glanced at the card. “ If you please, 
will you give me another, omitting my name, and 
calling me a reporter for the New York Monitor T 

“ When you become a great writer you will be 
proud of the lowest round. It’s the lowest round 
of their ladder, or the highest, that great men always 
talk about.” 

“ I hope I shall never be either proud or ashamed 
of this round,” said Dorothy, simply and gravely. 
“ I only want to do my work in a woman’s way, 
and I am more than willing to try whatever first 
presents itself. I thank you for this opportunity.” 

The editor flushed, drew up his great height in a 
slow, indolent manner, then opened the door politely 
for her, conducting her himself across a room crowded 
with men in their short sleeves and busy at the 
presses, to the head of the dingy flight of stairs. 


396 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ Don’t fall,” he said, kindly. 

Dorothy thanked him, bade him good-morning, 
and groped her way down and into the sunny 
street, a sober, anxious look upon her face as she 
crossed the park to take a stage. She felt all the 
strangeness and loneliness and uncertainty of a new 
undertaking. The day was before her, but during 
its sunny hours she had her reporting to finish and 
a shelter to find for the night. 

She certainly did not wear the mien or feel the 
assurance which is said to belong to the ordinary 
reporter. It was a long time since she had attended 
a fair of any kind, and a fair given for the benefit 
of a regiment suggested endless complications, 
which might involve her in endless difficulties. She 
entered the vast hall, her card held irresolutely in 
her fingers, the note-book and pencil, with which 
the editor had provided her, in her hand, and a 
despondent feeling over her chances for doing any 
thing having literary merit. If she could have de- 
scribed, with honest, humorous literalness, the young 
ladies standing behind lemonade buckets and smil- 
ing with financial sweetness, or had jotted down 
verbatim the queries which beset her from one cor- 
pulent or wiry vender after another, as to whether 
she would not pay particular attention to that 
lovely creature’s table over there ! 

“ Daughter, you know, of Mr. Monell. She has 
on a dress that came from Porterel’s. Put that in.” 

“ O yes ; ” and the mamma of Miss Monell 
smiled on the mamma of Miss Peters, as she arched 
her eyebrows at Dorothy, and said, “ I shall never 
forgive you, never, if you do not say that Miss Peters 


Dorothy Delafield. 


397 


is, beyond comparison, the most successful and 
charming saleswoman here. Put Miss Peters in, if 
every thing else is left out.” 

“ Yes ; ” now added a thin, little man, with thick 
eye-glasses, who had been watching Dorothy as she 
jotted down item after item, “ and give a paragraph 
to the Russian bazar, a line or two to the Persian 
booth, and describe that Greek interior in detail, 
the most taking thing I have seen at a fair in a 
long time. Did you ever see any thing like the 
way the American countenance lends itself to any 
costume in the world? Did you ever see better 
Greek beauties than Miss Taylor and Miss Jones in 
that booth? They are the daughters of Taylor & 
Jones, the great wholesale fish merchants. Put 
them in ! ” and the little man nodded his head as if 
the last fact made the Greek beauties a trifle more 
classical. 

“ I will say all I can,” said Dorothy, assuringly 
and sweetly. “ The fair is to have a half-column, the 
editor told me.” 

“ O, a half-column only! The Seventh Regi- 
ment 1 It ought to have a column. Do, my dear 
Miss — ” 

“ Miss Reporter,” and Dorothy laughed merrily. 

“Well, do, my dear Miss Reporter, use your in- 
fluence to secure us a column. Now, you know you 
can if you will.” 

“ I will do all I can,” said Dorothy, warmly, and 
firmly, intending to urge the editor to please these 
people with a column. 

After the end of an hour of buzzing and inter- 
rupted question and advice, she withdrew from the 


398 


Dorothy Delafield. 


hall, her face hot, her hands cold, to seek some near 
hotel where she might sit down and write out her 
report. Much practice in writing made this seem 
the easiest part of her task. When it was done, as 
she did not need to present her article till five 
o’clock, she wandered from street to street and 
house to house in search of a boarding-place. At 
last a spot, it was not more than that, was found ; 
an infinitesimal room over the vestibule of a gloomy, 
brown-stone house. But the street was respectable, 
and her landlady appeared kind. As long as she 
was safe, and had a bed and a wash-stand, Dorothy 
could be content for the present. But the little 
room, with washing and car-fare, would make a 
weekly hole in her pocket-book that led her to con- 
gratulate herself that her new effort, as homely as 
its beginning was, was immediately remunerative. 

At five o’clock she again presented herself at the 
Monitor building, her report written out with pre- 
cision and neatness. Her employer glanced over 
it and nodded approvingly. He laughed as he 
said “ it was rather personal, but had a freshness 
which made it a pity to cut it down.” 

“A lot of foreign and city news has come in, so 
that you must not be downcast if you are cut down 
to ten lines. There lies the risk in the pay. I am 
afraid your work wont be worth over eighteen cents 
to-day. Can you afford to work for that some 
days? ” 

Dorothy nodded calmly, for her throat was too 
full for her to trust her voice. 

“ I am not working altogether for money,” she 
said, after a pause. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


399 


The editor looked serious. Her directness, her 
frankness, her daring, her modesty, and yet ambi- 
tion, nonplussed him. 

“ How long can you hold out, independently of 
this work ? ” 

“ About three months.” 

The editor frowned, and wished from the very 
bottom of his heart that he had made it impossible 
for Dorothy to be disappointed through him. He 
ran his hands through his hair in his perplexity. 
Presently the color mounted to his florid face in 
deeper tones, her very calmness and expectancy 
confusing him ; he said : 

“ It isn’t very pleasant for you to be coming down 
here, and through that room yonder,” pointing with 
his thumb to the apartment whose dull whirr and 
white-sleeved workers she dreaded. “ I’ll arrange 
to have a boy come for your reports and bring mes- 
sages to you.” 

Dorothy’s head dropped a little, her eyes grew 
anxious. 

“ I don’t want to shrink from the rough part of it. 
I don’t want to be a burden to the Monitor. If it 
is customary — ” 

“ O, it is, perfectly ; one of the current expenses. 
We do that for good reporters. Your writing shows 
practice.” 

“ Is that all ? ” and Dorothy put her hand on the 
latch, longing to go. 

“ Yes. No ! Here is a description of a new rail- 
road center— must go in, but must occupy a third of 
the space. Cut that down for me, correct it, and 
make it interesting *, you will do me a real favor, for 


Dorothy Delafield. 


4CO 

I am behind-hand to-day. Write it over if you 
want to. Sit down at that desk.” 

Dorothy drew off her cloak, with its long, flowing 
sleeves, and sitting down at the ink-stained desk, 
began instantly to read the MS. She looked up 
presently. 

“ I think I will write it over.” 

The editor nodded. She was a beautiful curiosity 
to him ; but, if he had been requested to make a 
place for a seal in those dingy, dirty rooms, he 
would not have been more at a loss what to do with 
it than he was at the present how to occupy or get 
rid of this calm and naive young woman. His desk 
faced the one at which she was writing. She sat at 
her work with such ease, was so much interested, 
she wrote so rapidly, that he felt himself, despite 
his wish, acquiring a kind of faith in her possi- 
bilities. 

“ How rapidly you write,” he said, his tones pay- 
ing Dorothy an involuntary tribute. 

Her eyes expanded, her sober look relaxed, her 
face wore, for an instant, an uplifted, happy ex- 
pression, which was its greatest charm. 

The little office had been lighted some time, 
when, her task finished, she rose to go. She gave 
her address to her companion, her despondency 
gone, and a stout determination in her young heart 
not to be baffled by discouragements. Her sleep 
was sound and dreamless that night. She was glad 
the next morning, as she wakened rested, a healthy, 
vigorous life coursing in all her pulses, that she had 
come to the great center of success or defeat. 
There might be painful effort and some publicity at 


Dorothy Delafield. 401 

first, but finally there would come the privacy and 
the home, and earned by herself. 

All the days of the waning autumn were not 
pleasant. Plan for her as the friendly editor would, 
Dorothy underwent much exposure and a rude, if 
humbler, kind of publicity than she had experienced 
as a lecturer. She lost her color, and an incipient 
look of anxiety and fatigue began to sharpen her 
features. Sometimes she found her hands trembling 
sadly after their long and rapid strain. She lost the 
sense of being a woman set apart, which she had en- 
joyed as a lecturer, more than she was aware of, 
until she experienced, more keenly than she had 
ever done before, in the perfect loneliness of a large 
city, that circumstances are the great leveler of the 
living, and that to have a humble and prosaic occu- 
pation strips a woman of all desirable tribute to 
beauty, youth, or talent. 

To maintain her inward dignity she assiduously 
kept in mind the end for which she was working, 
and strained every nerve lest she should say or do 
any thing which would bring a blush when she had 
achieved her object. “ Noblesse oblige ” became her 
watch-word as she felt more and more tempted to 
believe at times in a stern necessity that knows no 
law. 

The messenger brought a note to her one stormy 
night, requesting her to go to the Union League 
Theater, to report the lecture of a lady who had be- 
come famous both as a lecturer and a lawyer. 

Dorothy donned her wraps with eagerness. She 
was most anxious to view objectively what she had 
done herself. Her valuable memory relieved her 
26 


402 


Dorothy Delafield. 


from the necessity of sitting among the reporters, 
although there was always some preliminary awk- 
wardness in procuring a seat with the audience 
favorably enough situated for her to see and hear 
to advantage. 

She went through much self-examination as she 
watched a slight, graceful woman, with dark eyes 
and abundant black hair, advance across the stage. 
Dorothy wondered over the perspective effect of 
the speaker’s smile, whether she had studied gesticu- 
lation, and whether she shrank from bestowing her 
graciousness and sweetness as a part indirectly in- 
cluded in her business compact. She asked herself 
if she would like to stand again on such a platform, 
clothed, as she used to be, in silk and lace, and 
present her face to hundreds, urging her voice be- 
yond its compass, even if it were solely for the 
purpose of giving utterance to some great truth. 
She was conscious of no desire to Vesume her former 
occupation ; she even congratulated herself on her 
evening’s task, so long as she had secured an 
obscure seat, and was not sitting at one of those ta- 
bles beneath the stage writing side by side with three 
or four men who were reporting for other city papers. 
All the time, while these thoughts were coursing 
through her brain, she was listening to the lecture, 
repeating an idea here and there to herself, in order 
to nail the connection in her memory, keeping her 
eyes fixed on the face of the speaker, so as not to 
lose an expression or a word that might assist her. 

She was ambitious to have her reports vie in 
general accuracy with those of her fellow-laborers ; 
but she became daily more anxious, as she realized 


Dorothy Delafield. 


403 


how wearying her duties were, that she should be 
offered some other work on the paper. It did not 
belong to her theory of success to ask for promo- 
tion, and so she toiled on, having no time, in the 
stress of her obligations, to make friends, and too 
fatigued, when night came, to care for any thing 
but absolute solitude or sleep. 

She reached her room, after the lecture, at ten 
o’clock, to hurry to divest herself of her damp 
clothing, for the wind had turned her umbrella in- 
side out, and the rain had beaten mercilessly down 
upon her in her walk across the town, and then 
begin the now familiar task of enlarging her few 
notes. 

The lecture was given two thirds of a column in 
the next day’s issue of the Monitor^ so that she felt 
well repaid for her labor of the previous evening ; 
she took an artistic pleasure in what seemed to her 
must be both a correct and elegant synopsis of the 
lecture and a vivid description of the speaker. 

Toward noon Dorothy received a note, by mes- 
senger, from the editor, informing her that Miss 
Drayton had been delighted with the Monitor 
notice, and had expressed a desire to meet the re- 
porter who had done his work so ably. 

Dorothy’s heart beat with gratified desire. The 
end was surely near ! It was certainly her work^ and 
not herself^ that was commanding recognition. Her 
work, at last, was assuming an impersonal quality. 

She donned a new black dress, a small, close-fit- 
ting bonnet, whose crape bands made her fair hair 
still fairer ; she incased her shapely hands in a new 
pair of gloves. Thus freshly arrayed, and with a 


404 


Dorothy Delafield. 


sense of importance which she had resolutely 
crushed during many weary weeks, she seated her- 
self in a car and rode to Twenty-fifth Street. 

She walked rapidly through a short block and 
came out upon Madison Square, which was softened 
by the golden haze of a mild and late winter day, 
and presently ascended the broad stoop of one of 
the houses overlooking the park. She handed her 
card to the butler — her visiting card, finely engraved 
with name and residence — and thought how pleasant 
it was to be calling in such a way and with so many 
subjects for conversation. Lecturing did not, in her 
estimation, detract from the quality of womanhood 
in any one but herself. 

She hoped that Miss Drayton and she would fall 
into a pleasant talk on books, or thoughts ; would 
enter right into the heart of things, just as Madame 
de Stael, or George Sand, or Margaret Fuller was 
said to have done. 

Dorothy was ushered into a darkened room, where 
Miss Drayton was busily conversing with two or 
three gentlemen. They withdrew shortly, one after 
the other, and she turned to Dorothy, who rose, 
smiling, and extending her hand, which Miss Dray- 
ton took. 

‘‘ I came from the Monitor. The city editor sent 
me word that you wished to see me.” 

O, ah ; yes ! and Miss Drayton kept shaking Doro- 
thy's hand in a perpendicular, business-like manner. 

“Did you report my lecture of last evening?” 
this with a slight surprise in her voice. 

“Yes,” said Dorothy, gently, and still softly 
smiling. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


405 


“ I was delighted with it, d^-light-Qd ! I never 
saw myself so well or so correctly represented before. 
I would like to pay you for what you did.” 

Dorothy shrank back slightly. 

“ O, something extra ’ over and above what the 
Monitor allows you. You are so truthful, so exact ! ” 
and Miss Drayton handed Dorothy $10. 

“ Excuse me ; ” and Dorothy dropped Miss 
Drayton’s hand. “ I came to see you.” 

Miss Drayton looked at Dorothy in matter-of- 
fact surprise, and said : 

“ I always pay reporters who present me as you 
have done — without sarcasm or hyperbole.” 

Dorothy’s lips were set firmly together. The 
color mottled her cheeks and neck. She said : 

“ We have misunderstood each other,” and went 
out, a sore ache in her heart, and tears that would 
not be repressed in her eyes. 

Ah, business was a sorry medium through which 
to reach the softer side of any nature. It enveloped 
a woman in a prosaic atmosphere, which stifled any 
spontaneity of sentiment. Dorothy suddenly and 
fully realized the exact status of the wandering re- 
porter. She could not have had a more uncanny 
feeling, as she walked up Fifth Avenue, if she had 
been the wandering Jew. 

On reaching home she found a telegram awaiting 
her, demanding her immediate presence at the 
Monitor office. 

She put away the fine garments, which two hours 
before she had donned with such a happy feeling, 
and in the plainest, severest black, and with a step 
that had lost its spring, and shoulders betraying a 


4o6 Dorothy Delafield. 

discouraging stoop, she started on the long ride 
down town. 

She glanced idly and sadly from the car window 
as it went farther and farther into the seething 
business center of the city. She looked at the florid 
faces and buxom forms of the hearty German 
women who got in and out, heavy baskets on their 
arms, fat babies on their laps or tugging at their 
skirts, broad smiles on their broader faces — women 
who were old and ugly before their time, with hus- 
bands always a little more dapper, redolent with 
tobacco or beer, and watching their wives carry the 
children or the family provisions with an air of 
nonchalant superiority. Dorothy despised those 
big, lazy, stupid men ; she wondered if American 
men would be like them, if their women developed 
the German muscle and the financial shrewdness 
that lurked in the feminine German eye. “ Heaven 
forbid ! ” she said, softly, to herself. Then she won- 
dered if all the articles with which the papers were 
filled on More Resources for Women ! would 
not eventually create just such prosaic conditions in 
American family life. As the car went on, into the 
very heart of the Bowery, and she beheld the smart 
Irish girls thronging the sidewalks in cheap, bright 
finery, and yet with the unmistakable stamp of 
manual labor upon them, she asked herself if it were 
not rather such women who must, in the end, come 
to the front in the feminine race for money or bread. 
She thought of the hosts of American girls behind 
counters, with nervous, sad expressions, and she 
asked herself if the environments of a store were 
favorable to the highest possibilities of her sex. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


407 


On the car went, whirling around the corner at 
Broome Street, down through Center Street, into the 
gloomy shadow of the Tombs, on through blocks 
devoted to manufacturing. 

“ This, this,’* she said to herself, “ is in the busi- 
ness center. What do I see for women to do here ? ” 

Dorothy had never accepted the theory of the 
physical equality of the sexes, and as she realized the 
overpowering tribute which those blocks of brick and 
granite, the whirr of heavy machinery, and the hur- 
rying mass of drays and cars and jostling men and 
coarse women paid to physical force, she said : 

“ It is all a mystery. Either the movement is a 
foolish one, or something is out of joint. Men can- 
not take care of all the women, and the women 
cannot take good care of themselves.” 

For the first time in her life she felt desperate^ 
and wished that her part of the struggle were at an 
end. She longed to lie with her dead on the Quincy 
hill-top. 

It was in such a frame of mind that she climbed 
the rickety stairs to the office, and gravely pre- 
sented herself before her employer. He detected 
the absence of the cheerful light that had never be- 
fore wavered in her gray eyes ; he felt the lack of 
her magnetic buoyancy that no long distance or 
meager pay had been able to dampen. He vent- 
ured, for want of some better subject, to ask, 

“Well, how did you like Miss Drayton?” 

Dorothy drew herself erect, her lip curled. 

“ I do not like her.” 

‘•She is very popular,” said the editor, a shrewd 
and yet systematic inquiry in his eyes. 


4o8 


Dorothy Delafield. 


She offered me money, as if that were the only 
thing in the world.” 

Dorothy flushed. 

*‘And wouldn’t you take it?” said the editor, 
kindly. 

“ I went to see her^' said Dorothy; and then, feel- 
ing that doubtless to the editor, also, there was 
something in the whole thing very ridiculous for a 
reporter, she said, “You sent for me?” 

He whirled in his chair to conceal his real appre- 
ciation of her discomfiture and said, “ Yes,” reflect- 
ing that as soon as a man does employ a lady, the 
social question will sooner or later arise. He turned 
presently with an assuring smile, saying, 

“ I have something new to propose to you. I 
think it will be a little better than what you have 
been doing. We are going to introduce a novel 
feature into journalism. We intend to increase the 
work of the pulpit tenfold. We intend to issue an 
extra page for the Monday edition of the paper, in 
order to give a weekly report of some of the best 
sermons preached in New York. If you will take 
some of these sermons to report, we can pay you 
a little better, and, besides, you will have a chance 
to give more attention to the literary quality of our 
work. What do you think ? ” 

While clearly seeing the business side of the en- 
terprise, she thought the issue might be morally very 
beneficial and said so. 

“ But,” she added, “ I should not be willing to 
work on Sunday.” 

The editor looked baffled. 

“ The whole Monday edition is wicked ; all the 


Dorothy Delafield. 


409 


work for the Monday paper has to be done on Sun- 
day ! — if you have conscientious scruples,” he said ; 
“ but no one ever thinks of doing without his Mon- 
day paper ! Do you understand German ? ” he 
asked, with real anxiety, for he was sincerely desir- 
ous of merely pleasing Dorothy. 

She shook her head affirmatively. 

“ There are all the synagogues. Some of the 
rabbis preach in German and some in English. 
The Jewish element of our population is becoming 
a very important constituent. Suppose, to begin 
with, you visit the various synagogues of the city. 
That will be Saturday work. But we can do a 
great deal better for you, if you will report Sunday 
sermons also. If you will think a second, it will be 
no worse for you to report the sermons than for the 
ministers to preach them.” 

“ That is true,” and Dorothy laughed. Then, 
with her head a little thrown back, the tears spark- 
ling in her eyes, she said : “ If I give up my Sunday 
I shall feel that I have crossed the last dividing line 
between — between — ” and she paused, ashamed of 
having given so much confidence. 

“You are getting discouraged. Miss Delafield. 
But if you will keep on there will come an opening, 
and you may become an editor of some important 
department of a paper. You are exceptionally qual- 
ified for journalistic work.” 

“ Thank you,” said Dorothy. “ Do you think it 
will be long ? ” 

The editor lifted his eyebrows, implying, 

“ Don’t ask me that.” 

It was finally arranged that Dorothy should begin 


410 


Dorothy Delafield. 


her new effort at the Fifth Avenue Temple on the 
following Saturday. 

It was a great relief to have the strain of close 
listening occupy the morning, her writing finished 
and dispatched early in the afternoon. Such re- 
porting was much better than evening visits alone 
to halls and theaters and fairs. And so it happened 
that our Puritan Dorothy trained her conscience 
until she sat listening to Sunday sermons with a 
feeling that the ministers and she had a mutual 
work to perform, and that her portion of it should 
be as religiously executed as if she were in the very 
pulpit preaching. 

The Delafield sermons, as they were called pri- 
vately at the office, were very popular. If Dorothy 
did not present the exact phraseology, she always 
expressed the thought correctly, and many a D.D. 
approved the report of his Sabbath effort without 
an inkling that a pair of gray womanly eyes that 
had watched his face with a longing, earnest look, 
that never wavered from the time he began till he 
ended, were the windows to the strong mind that 
condensed his thought for the multitude. 

It was rather interesting, moreover, to Dorothy to 
compare one mind with another, as she certainly 
had an excellent opportunity of doing. Occasion- 
ally the possession of such an odd form of knowl- 
edge as an eventual acquaintance with nearly every 
church interior in the city, as well as the incongru- 
ity between the dignity of the pulpit effort and the 
lowliness of her own, pleased her sense of humor. 
Her fun was not so quenched that she did not 
sometimes put down her pencil and laugh quietly 


Dorothy Delafield. 


41 1 

to herself over the opportunity she had to pervert 
the meaning of some grave divine. An almost 
irresistible desire impelled her at times to insert a 
bit of Methodism into a Roman Catholic report, or 
some ornate bit of ritualism into the very heart of a 
Presbyterian discourse. 

In three or four weeks she felt at her ease in this 
new effort. She could come and go unknown, the 
few notes she took attracting little or no attention. 

She dreaded the frequent and severe spring 
storms. She took a cold in one of these, which she 
could not get rid of. She stood at the window one 
raw day in March, when the very flood-gates of 
heaven seemed loosened. The storm howled down 
the chimney of her fourth-story room. The rain 
fell in such torrents that the_ gutters of the street 
were transformed into miniature rivulets. But it 
was Saturday, and she had been commissioned to 
report the sermon of a rabbi on the west side of the 
city. She lived on the east side, and, as more than 
two car fares could not consistently be included in 
expenses, she decided to try to walk across town. 

As the wind caught her skirts and twisted them 
around her ankles, and she realized how few pedes- 
trians were abroad, and not a woman to be seen, 
look where she would, she asked herself if she were 
not paying very dearly for a theory. Her throat 
hurt her ; it was difficult to breathe. 

She struggled across Fifth Avenue, and paused 
on the pavement a moment to recover strength. 

Three or four vehicles met and impeded the way 
momentarily. A carriage halted opposite Dorothy. 
She looked into the open window involuntarily, 


412 


Dorothy Delafield. 


wishing that she were sheltered from the inclement 
day. A lady was leaning forward, an eager search- 
ing look in her large black eyes. As her gaze met 
Dorothy’s she threw the door of the carriage open 
and sprang out, the wind swaying her as she stepped 
on the curb-stone. Undaunted, she held out her 
arms and cried, “ Dorothy!” 

Dorothy dropped her umbrella, which the wind 
carried far down the street, and, in her amazement 
and delight, stood motionless. A sudden faintness 
seized her trembling limbs. 

“ Dorothy, don’t you know Ellice, your prodigal 
Ellice ? ” and Ellice had put her arm around Doro- 
thy, half-leading, half-pushing her toward the car- 
riage. The old smile momentarily lighted her face, 
but Dorothy realized, with sad vividness, the havoc 
which trouble had made with that once joyous 
countenance. 

She suddenly put her arms around Ellice’s neck, 
and kissed and kissed her again, the rain beating 
down upon them both. 

Ellice loosened the convulsive grasp of Dorothy’s 
arm, and gently urging her to enter the carriage and 
saying, 

“ I am going to take you home with me,” she 
sprang in herself. 

She grasped Dorothy’s hands in hers, holding 
them with silent intensity till they reached the 
hotel. Dorothy followed her to her rooms, pas- 
sively allowing her friend to remove her wet wraps. 
As Ellice drew off her gloves and turned Dorothy’s 
hand lingeringly in her own, she saw the sapphire 
gleaming where she had placed it. 


Dorothy Delafield. 


413 

“ I have been true to you, Ellice. O, Ellice, tell 
me that you have come to stay.” 

“ I have come to stay, Dorothy.” 

They sank down side by side upon a sofa, with a 
sense, for a few minutes, of the old times come back. 
But then Dorothy was seventeen ; now she was 
twenty-four. Ellice, two years her senior, looked 
fully thirty, with a white thread gleaming here and 
there in the waving locks of her hair, and a chas- 
tened sadness about eyes and lips as she smiled at 
Dorothy, as if she could not be sufficiently glad to 
see her. 

This was not the same Ellice who had frowned 
and caressed in one minute, and, while lovable and 
gracious, was always selfish. 

“ Well, Dorothy,” said Ellice, at length, while 
tightening her hold of Dorothy’s hands, “ we are 
very much changed, you and I ! ” • 



414 


Dorothy Delafield. 


^HAPJFBI^ lU. 



HEN Judge Pettibone bade Dorothy good- 


bye, after his fruitless wooing, he returned 


home with an amazed sense of the cumulative force 
of misfortune ; he pondered gravely on the ruthless 
adjustment of circumstances which left him desti- 
tute at fifty of every domestic prop on which he 
tried to lean. He had a sharpening recognition of 
the defect he possessed in common with his chil- 
dren, the underlying thought of self as animating 
every impulse and act. Even on that homeward 
ride he chose to designate his love for Dorothy as a 
passing fancy of his mature years which had re- 
ceived an opportune check, rather than to recognize 
it as a wholesome, honest, manly affection, which, 
although hurting his pride and his longing in its 
unrequited poignancy, did him no worse harm than 
to disturb his complacency. 

We are so inclined, until we have suffered recently 
or bitterly, to vaunt ourselves when others are bat- 
tling against the tide, and to call them foolish for 
not shifting and sailing with a favoring current. 
Only when we, too, have been in the very vortex, 
and steer as we may, have found the circle narrow- 
ing and narrowing toward the final engulfment, 
have we realized that there are periods in all lives 
when the currents meet with combined force and 
overwhelm, unless some other hand than a human 
one extricates. Such experiences save us from a 


Dorothy Delafield. 


415 


petty sense of personal superiority, and fill us with 
a reluctance to inject advice while offering sym- 
pathy. The gratuitous adviser in emergencies of 
which he can know nothing is the man or woman 
who, if having suffered adversity, has, notwithstand- 
ing, no proper sense of its sweet uses. Judge Petti- 
bone was sorrier than he had been conscious of 
feeling for a long time for some of his Quincy ac- 
quaintances. 

The judge possessed a generous physical vitality 
and a strong ambitious mind. But he had little of 
the spiritual endowment, and what he did possess 
had gone out to Dorothy’s nature, so much larger 
in this respect than any with which he had been 
thrown in intimate contact. But, since he could 
not win her, he would turn a deaf ear and a deaf 
heart toward any suggestions to the higher living 
which her companionship had promised. He en- 
tered his home with a dogged insistence that he 
was not unhappy, except as he fancied himself so, 
but, with a sense of kinship, after all, with unfortu- 
nate humanity. He did not know exactly what he 
would do. He wished, among a hundred other 
things, that he was not the executor for Dorothy’s 
property, which he had invested in New York real 
estate and government bonds. But since she could 
not come into possession of it till she was twenty- 
four, he would practically have forgotten, by the 
time he was obliged to meet her, that she had been 
any thing in his life. And there was Ellice’s prop- 
erty ! His delight that it was entailed was un- 
bounded. He spent days in trying to find some 
precedent for withholding the income after she be- 


4i6 Dorothy Delafield. 

came of age, until he suddenly realized that she was, 
after all, his child, and that poverty, while increasing 
her misery, would increase his disgrace tenfold. So 
he adjusted her affairs with careful precision, await- 
ing, with gloomy patience, a letter informing him of 
her whereabouts. He was glad that Nathan was of 
age, and could, therefore, be dropped from his 
thought and care. 

A nervous restlessness seized him, as it had 
Nathan ; but he resolutely attached himself to his 
home, too proud to leave it, or to manifest, by any 
outward neglect or inner lack of ceremony, that the 
calm and prosperity of his domestic relations had 
been disturbed. All the same, in a year or two 
every body spoke of the judge as a changed man. 

There were cases in plenty to exercise his skill, 
and he buried himself in court duties, rolling up 
money for his children or public institutions; which 
it would be affording a garrulous theme for vagrant 
loungers at the neighboring tavern bar. 

Dorothy came and went during her vacations. 
Sometimes she did not see the judge at all during 
her stay in Quincy, and each time that she did the 
gulf grew wider between them. 

The ideality with which Robert unfalteringly in- 
vested his prosaic life rasped the judge, who would 
have taken comfort in seeing the noble patience 
falter, the humorous, tolerant comprehension of 
human frailty narrow into querulousness and con- 
sciousness. He always, after being with Robert, 
knew that his own circumstances had narrowed his 
sympathies and his aspirations. This constant sense 
of defeat led him to avoid Quincy. Thus it hap- 


Dorothy Delafield. 


417 


pened, when Dorothy was graduated, that the inter- 
course between the Pettibones and Delafields was 
rare and irregular, and that at the time of Rob- 
ert’s death the judge did not even know of this sad 
event until after Dorothy had gone West. 

Just as the Quincy mills closed he had an oppor- 
tunity of selling the homestead to one of his con- 
nections, and parted with it in an impulse to break 
up associations which continued to fetter and hu- 
miliate him. By this time he had accustomed him- 
self to confer with Nathan on personal matters, 
since his son had begun a course in law, and it was 
at Nathan’s urgent entreaty that he removed to 
New York. 

Nathan had convinced himself of one fact, and 
that is, that a man has to have interests and make 
interests on which others are dependent for happi- 
ness and prosperity before he can be of moral or 
social importance. As his years increased he felt 
ashamed of being a witness merely of the struggle 
for achievement. The positive expression, when he 
was in the army, of his weak powers of resistance 
and endurance awoke slowly but effectively his 
slumbering energies. Habit is a powerful ally. 
Nathan discovered, to his surprise and satisfaction, 
after three years of stubborn application, that the 
new chains were as strong as the old, and helpful to 
something far more tangible. Work became a men- 
tal necessity. Thus it happened that, from being a 
lover of dogs and horses and pastoral ease, Nathan 
became one of the myriad host of young men one 
sees in New York. The business look was on his 
face and in his mien. The clear blue-gray eyes 
27 


Dorothy Delafield. 


418 

sometimes wore a cold abstracted gaze ; the fore- 
head, which had a womanly sweetness when Dorothy 
last saw it, betrayed a tendency to wrinkle ; the 
form, which at twenty-two was gaunt, was filled out 
and commanding at twenty-eight. Nathan s man- 
ner retained its responsiveness and sympathy, but 
he passed for a silent fellow among his associates, 
although the recipient withal of many a secret. He 
had crossed the ocean once to see Ellice, and had 
gone over again to bring her home shortly before 
the date when she and Dorothy had met. 

The six years since the two girls had parted had 
been six years of concentrated misery to Ellice, who 
had felt too sad and disappointed to communicate 
with Dorothy. She tried and tried again to pro- 
pitiate her father. Every time that her semi- 
annual income was sent to her she wrote imploring 
letters of reconciliation, and every time they came 
the judge sat up all night, walking or reading, but 
morning found him unrelenting. Finally a stack of 
French newspapers reached him, and with them 
another letter from Ellice, in which she not only 
begged for his love, but asked forgiveness for the 
past. The judge sat up all night again, with sleep- 
less, burning eyes, and loving Ellice with all the re- 
pressed affection of six long years. 

He wrote her a letter first, telling her that he 
would start the following Wednesday, on the Asiatic^ 
and then, alternately reading the papers and con- 
sulting his books, the day dawned before he felt 
armed with all possible information for the compli- 
cations in which his daughter might be involved. 

Madame and the marquis had gone from one 


Dorothy Delafield. 419 

daring deed of iniquity to another, using Ellice’s 
money for their schemes until, grown reckless with 
success, they perpetrated a crime which compelled 
them to flee their country. 

The judge started on the AsiaitCy and Ellice, duly 
receiving his letter, waited, in all the loneliness of a 
condition worse than widowhood, for the father 
whose tenderness had never been replaced. 

The days passed ; they merged into weeks. A 
letter came from Nathan, filled with apprehension ; 
then another long silence elapsed, and at last the 
tidings sped to hundreds that the Asiatic had gone 
down with all on board. 

When this news came, Ellice started on her return 
alone. Desolation confronted her, turn where she 
would. No more trouble could befall her than had 
overtaken her, and the desire to leave Paris forever 
overcome every obstacle. She reached London in 
time to find a dispatch from Nathan awaiting her, 
telling her to remain there till he arrived. 

When the brother and sister met, Nathan was 
shocked to see the early maturity that had settled 
upon Ellice’s features and movements. Her beauty 
was majestic, but faded. Her youth had gone for- 
ever. 

I am as old as I ever can be in heart, Nathan,’* 
she said, as her brother grieved over the change. 
But tell me,” she inquired, after their first greet- 
ing and their mutual mourning, Where is Doro- 
thy?” 

Nathan flushed the pale, even flush habitual to 
his face as he slowly replied, 

“ I do not know ; I have never overcome a feeling 


420 


Dorothy Delafield. 


of shame at the thought of meeting her. I used to 
hear of her till she left Quincy.” 

“Left Quincy!” exclaimed Ellice. 

“ Yes, Quincy has fallen upon evil days. It is as 
poor and dead a little town as can well be imagined, 
and the Delafields fared very hard, I fear. Doro- 
thy’s father and mother are dead ; Joe and Elizabeth, 
too. Dorothy went away somewhere.” Nathan 
paused abruptly. 

“ And didn’t father look after Dorothy?” 

“ Ellice,” and Nathan paused ; “ I think father 
loved Dorothy ; I think we all loved her more than 
we knew.” 

Ellice clasped Nathan’s hands in silent response. 

“ Then there is a matter, now that father has gone 
away, of which either you or I must inform Doro- 
thy. She is quite an heiress.” 

Nathan told the story of Dr. Withers’s bequest, 
and of how the property had accumulated more 
than Dr. Withers would have desired, until Dorothy 
is worth $200,000, and nearly, if not quite, of the 
stipulated age to claim her inheritance. 

“ She is of age, or will be this summer,” said 
Ellice ; “ O, Nathan, what a revelation this will be 
to her 1 ” 



Dorothy Delafield. 


421 


©HAPirBF{ U. 



OROTHY sprang from her seat late in the aft- 


ernoon of the eventful day on which she had 


met Ellice, exclaiming, 

“ My sermon ! O, I have forgotten all about my 
sermon ! ” 

“ Never mind,” said Ellice, who had been alter- 
nately relating her own history and listening to 
Dorothy’s. “ I hope you will never report another 
sermon.” 

Dorothy shook her head dissentingly, as she in- 
quired for writing material to dispatch a note to 
the Monitor, 

“ Let me write the letter, Dorothy,” and Ellice, 
who had waited and waited to tell Dorothy of her 
inheritance till some such moment as this arrived, 
eagerly seized the pen from Dorothy’s hand. She 
sat down. What is his name?” 

“ Brewster, Mr. Brewster — Dear sir,” said Dorothy, 
literally. “ Come, Ellice, let me write. How should 
you know what to say ? ” 

I do know,” and Ellice looked lovingly at Doro- 
thy. I shall say, Mr. Brewster — Dear sir: Miss 
Dorothy Delafield comes into possession of a large 
fortune on her twenty-fourth birthday, and as the 
time is near at hand, she desires a vacation from her 
reporting until she can adjust her affairs. Hoping, 
however, that you will keep her position open, she 
remains, etc., etc. — ” 


422 


Dorothy Delafield. 


“ Stop, Ellice,” and Dorothy seized Ellice’s hand. 

I am so tired that even such a brilliant idea 
wearies me.” 

“Is it disagreeable news?” asked Ellice, ear- 
nestly. Something in her intensity made Dorothy 
look at her in solemn incredulity. “ It is true, it 
is, my dear Dorothy ! ” and Ellice laid down her pen 
and drew Dorothy toward her. “ A strange piece 
of good fortune has befallen you. As nearly as 
Nathan can judge you are worth two hundred thou- 
sand dollars.” 

Dorothy lifted her hands to her head in bewilder- 
ment, brushing back the hair from her forehead as 
she said, slowly, 

“ How can I be worth any money?” 

“ Sit down here, Dorothy,” and Ellice drew a 
chair for her friend close beside her, “ and I will tell 
you.” 

The room had grown dusky before she finished 
rehearsing the story of Dr. Withers’s death and his 
loving care for Dorothy. 

“ He didn’t know what a hard time you would 
have, I am sure, my poor darling, or he would not 
have allowed you to tread such a rough path,” and 
Ellice stroked Dorothy’s hair. 

“ Ellice dear,” said Dorothy, tremulously, “ I 
think the hard lines come into every life sooner or 
later, and sometimes they remain from the begin- 
ning to the end. Think of father and mother ! ” 

“ Yes,” replied Ellice, thoughtfully. “ If only 
my hard lines were not of my own making. Endur- 
ance of evil may become a habit ; but remorse is as 
new and as unwelcome to me to-day as it was six 


Dorothy Delafield. 


423 


years ago. I am weary of myself in the morning, 
and wearier still when night comes. It is an awful 
thing to lose one’s self-respect.” 

“ You have repented for the past as much as you 
could, Ellice dear.” 

“Yes,” said Ellice, mournfully ; “ but repentance 
does not undo a dreadful past. The only comfort 
I take is in the thought of atoning by doing for 
others.” 

She rose and lighted the gas and stirred the fire, 
saying, half-sadly, with a pathetic humor about her 
trembling lips, 

“We will make the room as bright as possible, 
and go brush your hair a little, Dorothy; for Nathan 
ought to have been here long ago.” 

The door opened as she spoke, and Nathan ap- 
peared in the door-way. As his gaze fell upon 
Dorothy, who had turned to enter Ellice’s chamber, 
he instantly recognized the well-knit, lithesome 
figure. He saw at a glance the paleness of her face, 
the fatigue and sweetness of her earnest eyes, and 
the mass of light-brown hair waving back from her 
forehead in disheveled beauty. He could not, even 
then, after the lapse of all these years, cross the gulf 
Dorothy herself had put between them. She read 
his thought, and, after a second of trembling uncer- 
tainty, she advanced toward him, saying, in a trem- 
ulous, pleased voice, 

“ How glad I am to see you once more, Nathan.” 

He took her hand, gazing into her face as if for 
approval, as he said, 

“ I have been working hard the past four years, 
Dorothy, trying to make something of myself! ” 


424 


Dorothy Delafield. 


She looked at him deprecatingly, and then, with 
arch approval and sympathy combined, she said, 

“ Do not apply yourself too closely.” 

They dined together that evening with a sense of 
home which none of them had experienced for 
many a weary year. They talked Dorothy s affairs 
over at length, and then, as they gathered around 
the fire in Ellice’s parlor, the conversation turned 
upon the position and duties of two women as much 
alone as Dorothy and Ellice were, and with so 
much time and money at their command. 

“ The first thing I hope you will do,” said Nathan, 

is to make a home for yourselves, and let me have 
a corner in it.” 

“ Agreed,” Ellice cried. 

Dorothy, while having her own views on the sub- 
ject, said, 

“What do you think I ought to do with my 
career, Nathan, now that I do not need to support 
myself? ” 

“ Rest,” said Nathan, emphatically. 

“ A month or two of ease with Ellice will rest 
me,” said Dorothy; “ and then what?” 

“ Well,” replied Nathan, with as much curiosity 
on his part to know what was in Dorothy’s mind 
as she had to learn his notion of a rich woman’s vo- 
cation ; “ then I suppose that Ellice and you will 
want to furnish your house, and here in New York 
that is a tremendously serious affair. I hear that 
it takes a year or two, and that afterward the reno- 
vating process is so constant that ladies either have 
to take a trip abroad or go to a sanitarium every 
summer.” 


Dorothy Delafield. 425 

“ O, we are not going to either furnish or enter- 
tain exhaustively,” said Ellice. “ I have in mind 
that cozy house we own on Twenty-fifth Street — 
wide, three stories high, and sunny— neither small 
nor large. We might begin there, if Dorothy thinks 
well of it.” 

“What should we do then, Nathan?” continued 
Dorothy, with gentle persistence. 

The muscles contracted about Nathan’s eyes. 

“ Then I suppose you will have benevolent special- 
ties. Ellice will haunt tenement-houses and doubt- 
less head a reform that will transmit her name to 
posterity as that of a lady who, indeed, kept her own 
house well, and would also fain keep a thousand 
others after a set pattern. You, Dorothy, will per- 
haps make mission work your specialty, shutting 
your mind and your heart to every thing not in 
your own beaten track, and enjoying the recom- 
pense of seeing your name attached to, say, twenty 
pairs of socks, sixteen ditto, twelve merino ditto, 
etc., etc., in missionary reports ; you will become a 
skillful financier in schemes which deal with hu- 
manity in masses. 

“ Do you think this the best and highest work I 
can do ? ” persisted Dorothy. 

“ If you have any social position, you will have to 
devote a morning a week to philanthropy. You 
wouldn’t have any thing to talk about at half the 
lunches you attended unless you did so. A lady is 
a nonentity who cannot insert ‘her poor women’ 
or ‘ her west-side class ’ incidentally with the last 
opera or philharmonic. You must dabble in these 
things.” 


426 


Dorothy Delafield. 


Jesting aside, let us talk earnestly, for this is a 
serious question,” said Ellice. 

Speaking seriously,” said Nathan, rising and 
leaning against the mantel, “the question is not what 
Dorothy or any particular woman should do. It is 
not a rich woman’s question or a poor woman’s 
question, or, indeed, a feminine question at all. It 
interests men and women equally. I know hardly 
a man down town to whom the query as to what 
women should do, or be, does not come with tre- 
mendous practical force. Most men, if they haven’t 
wives or mothers or children, have sisters or aunts 
or cousins for- whom they would like to do some- 
thing, or for whom somebody thinks they ought to 
do something. No matter what a man’s income, it 
seems to me that there are always more women 
than it can possibly support. The cost of living is 
so great, and the ambitions and tastes of all classes so 
cultivated, that it has simply become impossible to 
supply the demand, unless we encourage the greater 
proportion of both sexes to become workers, special- 
ists. The thing I joke about concerning the com- 
paratively few women who can choose some avenue 
for their surplus activity and money is only a mani- 
festation of this same spirit. It belongs to the age 
for every body, rich or poor, to be occupied in some 
special direction. The rich call their instinctive 
activity charity. The poor, or those who, however 
high their standard, earn money, call their activity 
work. All this may be an outgrowth of our civili- 
zation ; it is too early to tell yet. But every family 
is anxious to popularize effort for women, because, 
in plain English, the higher the general culture the 


Dorothy Delafield. 427 

more women there are that men cannot maintain. 
Either the present condition must be an awful con- 
sequence of past degeneracy — among men, I sup- 
pose, we must admit — or it is a step in the evolution 
of women to a higher condition. What have you 
to say, Dorothy ? ” 

I agree with you, Nathan, that this activity is 
an expression of the age, and that we are in the 
midst of an evolution or retrogradation of which we 
cannot precisely foretell the result. I am convinced, 
also, that the higher the general civilization, in the 
popular acceptation of the term, the more women 
there are who are either unsupported or so poorly 
supported, relatively to the civilization, that they 
feel obliged to work for money. Women certainly 
do manifest a universal impulse toward some form, 
other than domestic, of organized activity. But I 
am truly unable to tell whether, abstractly consid- 
ered, even esthetically considered, such activity 
solves the highest feminine mind and character. I 
am inclined to think, at all events, that women will 
physically degenerate under occupation which they 
cannot set aside.” 

“ That may be true of some women, but it is just 
as true of some men,” said Ellice, earnestly. “ One 
never expects to see all men physically well endowed 
in the race, but one feels that it is unfortunate for a 
man, even if physically poorly equipped, not to 
work, or, to speak more broadly, not to engage in 
some form of activity which renders him measure- 
ably independent of others. It seems to me that 
the question is whether all women will not, in the 
end, be benefited by the majority of the sex having 


428 


Dorothy Delafield. 


some special aim in life rather than whether women 
may be physically overtaxed. Take yourself, Doro- 
thy. You are tired now and need rest, but you are 
a nobler and stronger woman because you have 
tested your own resources in self-respect. The 
great trouble with me was that I was brought up in 
such a way that I honestly believed in my personal 
superiority and right to be irresponsible. My whims 
were my laws.” 

“ The great trouble with you and me alike, Ellice,” 
said Nathan, “ was that we didn’t think at all. It 
is just as hard work to think right as to do right. 
You and I were lovers of mental ease as well as 
physical ease.” 

“ Tell me frankly, Dorothy,” continued Ellice, 

do you think you could be willing, placed as you 
are, without ties of any kind, to spend your time in 
the desultory manner of the ordinary woman mov- 
ing in good society ? ” 

“ Now that I have formed the opposite habit, no, 
Ellice. But neither my education nor the necessity 
of self-support shaped my highest thought or most 
developed my energy. From the time that I 
recognized spiritual power as supreme, all that I 
have done has been performed under strong con- 
victions. Some of my effort, nevertheless, per- 
plexes me, as regards the drift of its final influence. 
I do not, moreover, feel warranted in drawing gen- 
eral conclusions from my individual case. Perhaps 
I have been too much in the current to know the 
direction of the stream.” 

I believe that I would have been a better girl 
and woman, even if my time, during childhood, had 


Dorothy Delafield. 429 

been systematically employed, and my surplus 
vigor taxed. Waste power always produces mis- 
chief. I hope you will continue to work with your 
pen or your tongue, whichever best pleases you ; 
and finally, Dorothy, that you will teach me how to 
be useful,” said Ellice, softly. “ I want to fit myself 
to spend my time and money in the wisest way for 
others.” 

“ Will you let me choose the way to spend a por- 
tion of our strength and money, Ellice?” said 
Dorothy. “ Missions and tenement-house reform 
and cruelty to children, all these general causes 
which women help, and help nobly, are already well- 
supported. But, Ellice,” and her voice had a thrill, 
“ there are hundreds of women — ladies, like you — 
willing to work and doing good work; but their 
social natures are left uncared for, and all their re- 
sources are discouragingly narrow. Such women 
cannot be helpful as a matter of mere benevolence. 
Women have yet to learn to assist one another, as 
men give mutual aid. Let us turn our chief atten- 
tion to the refined, ambitious workihg woman, who 
has aspirations, tastes, and beliefs in common with 
ourselves ; for such women suffer the most and are 
helped the least. So few women, outside of their 
affections, know how to help without holding over 
the recipient the lash of either the sternest social 
obsequiousness or a humiliating sense of charitable 
obligation. Let us be brain and heart for women 
who are too self-respecting to accept charity or 
patronage. Such women ask only for assistance to 
help themselves. Let us seek for a fame which 
will accrue to the women we help instead of to 


430 


Dorothy Delafield. 


ourselves. The ostentation of charity among women 
is something to be deplored.” 

It is as bad among men,” said Nathan; “and 
what arrant nonsense it is ! Those who are rich 
to-day may be poor to-morrow.” 

“ Yes, and so many of the struggles represent the 
best blood and the best brain of our old American 
families. There are so many women of this kind 
sprinkled in with a rougher foreign element, and 
they get the worst of the battle because they have 
not learned to be self-asserting and vulgar, and 
shrewd to the verge of dishonesty. Such women 
have not learned to receive presents and clandestine 
attentions from men. You meet them every-where 
when you are a worker,” and Dorothy’s eyes dilated. 
“ It is such risks and such buffetings that make me 
feel unsettled on the question of woman’s work out- 
side of home. Perhaps,” she said, after a moment 
of thoughtful silence, “ when I am older I shall be 
able to formulate a theory. Just now I am sure of 
only one thing, I want my life to be full of a wise 
activity that shall especially benefit womankind.” 


THE END. 




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